Whose, Then

Again: a different desolation: cities, cellphones, planes.
       Not the barren fields that had been the world,

where the sweep of distance could go on for hours
       with no sign of people and their lives.

Still, the mother walks as if through a deserted space.
       As if the cars and houses don’t exist, as if nothing

but her pain makes up the world. Her pain
       and the longing for the one who has gone, opened

the heart of the flower and entered the other
       world, where the dark god waited.

No: there was no flower, no dark god.
       Just a young woman and a young man,

a night when he swore to love her, when she swore
       to love him, when her long prayer

for a man to adore her was answered.
       And the mother said, the mother said she feared losing her—

This isn’t about you, the daughter cried.
       As in shouted, rebuked: spurning myth and its comforts.

Lynne Knight | Deep in the Forest the Unread
Mudlark Contents | Mudlark Chap No. 66 (2018)