She wants to ask the trees some questions,

a solemn synod

grown anciently deaf

bent at the waist for a thousand years

to hear her.

And her? She’s barely been alive

and yet is ancient life itself,

bursting at the bones

painting green into the grass

blushing moss into the oaks

wherever she chooses to walk.

Her mother named her for the light

for gentle hymns

for silver cups

and curving doors that close in the face of disaster.

She doesn’t know she’ll come here all her life

for the times when

snakebreath hisses underneath her hem

and curls beneath the hearth

when fireflies alight upon her crown

and when she finds her first wheat field,

her palms rose-gold

and her iron feet hot and rusted.

And she doesn’t know that one day

she will want nothing more

than to rest again beneath the bishop trees

and become a bishop herself

bent at the waist

with one deaf ear cocked

to hear.  

Copyright © 2018 by Aurea Kochanowski.