Skip to main content

Swan Maiden?!?

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #126.



Swan maiden? First it was goose girl,
child of the village who tumbles getting water,
lost in the dark forest hanging over the gate,
Born under a sign exploding over castle
Built a hundred years ago
And now? The swans are returning
Midnight-black and friendly as pigeons!
So I'm the swan maiden, 
the candle in the mine,
the peasantry's reparative marriage.
A flock of black swans follows me
Even in eider-white, 
Even when I'm barely taller
Than a heraldic wingspan.
Go find your fixes elsewhere!
Build a girl from tinker's bits
Or from the ripped aprons
Or from the forest's leaves!
I'll march this flock back to the stars
Before we fill the castle's pillows
With dreaming, darkwing down.

Okay. It's been a weird week. So far, I've had nightmares about having to shower in WalMart, my brother turning me into the cops for a joke so many times that the cops decided to go ahead and arrest me, and various other stressful situations. My brain is stressed about something and it wants me to be sure to know that we're stressed. Message received. Hope you're having a better week, good weather, periods of calmness, and the writing is going well. I may or may not be sitting here with a dog in my lap, watching the rain fall and waiting for my brain to leap out of a dark corner and attack. 

-- Chrissa 

Comments

  1. Carrie BurttSeptember 3, 2022 at 1:52 PM

    This poem swirled me into a magical fairy tale Chrissa and those last lines are captivating!! I can relate to your stressful dreams. I know how exhausting that can be. Wishing you a peaceful week ahead.

    ReplyDelete
  2. FireblossomSeptember 3, 2022 at 3:32 PM

    The poem itself is very dreamlike, full of shifts and waves, and the swans are the perfect vehicle for it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gillena CoxSeptember 4, 2022 at 1:16 AM

    Nice one Chrissa.
    Happy Sunday

    Much💛love

    ReplyDelete
  4. Marion HortonSeptember 4, 2022 at 3:36 AM

    Dream or fairy tale - it doesn't matter, it's a wonderful escape into imagination.

    ReplyDelete
  5. HelenSeptember 4, 2022 at 9:34 AM

    You are an amazing "in your head" creative writer! This is pure evidence, Chrissa. Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  6. JimSeptember 5, 2022 at 7:30 PM

    Have you had the COVID? We had shots and a booster but we still got it. Before that I could never remember my dreams, we all dream for the mind to sort things of the day out, but most aren't remembered. Now I am remembering my dreams. I like dreams but most I never remembered. Also I can't smell or taste and I forget names, names of places and people.
    ..

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turn Away

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the  pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm.  Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story.  Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in...
15 comments
Read more

The Soul and The Spine

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #195 . Come and share! When it blew out the candle, It began to speak, voice low,  eyes dimmer than flame. Jenn believed, once upon a childhood (she's still there... but it's waning), it inhaled fire. Spines, tonight. Gears ladder bones and metal and plastic, all that lived, rungs to heaven. Heaven is a level of space where you can't breathe  so they used to send the dead. When the flame goes, it takes our memories with it. But not bot files. Maybe it believes  she'll sleep easier if bots go breathless, too. It continues murmuring and she pretends she's hearing a confession in a box Like the song her mother plays when the dark stretches  between signals We can handle shocks. She can handle the dark, the small  not-flame of its eyes. It's finally winter!! Which means bitmapped frost on the roofs, cold mornings, and a table full of succulents that are pretty much glaring at me because the kitchen window isn't the same as full su...
14 comments
Read more

A Single (Terrible) Poem

 I did not buy the poetry book whose sample Was page after page of essay and praise. I'm not following the trumpets. Today I follow the ringers-- Huzzah and call out the streets! Lift your arm, swing the bell; Call out the quiet, call out the neat Call out the loud, call out the bold Call out the wrong, call out the wise We remember the bells We shiver the skies.    This isn't about...anything. It's not about nothing. It should go without saying that a poem shouldn't need an essay or a textbook to be what it is. And I'm not sure why, with a stack of poetry at hand to be read, one silly Kindle sample (and writer's block and anxiety and...) would push my buttons so badly. But seriously. Where is my parody book full of fake blurbs that runs for 50 pages and ends with a single (terrible) poem?  -- Chrissa
11 comments
Read more