Five years fly back to find us here
still wanderers,
rough with a dream that clings to our hair,
will not wash off in mountain streams
or free-blown wind.
Through brush, swamp elder,
cattails snapping – swooping herons
bring no news of unicorns.
Through forests petrified to stone,
waterfalls, apple orchards,
cracked robins’ eggs, and bits of string –
thrushes, catbirds, crickets sing
no songs of beauty such as this,
give us no hope at all.
Till, there in the lush grass soft to the touch
of steaming hooves, carved ivory,
the unicorn, moonlit white with beaded tail,
braided mane, star-speckled eyes
in a world of mirrored dew.
One moment we have
to catch the wonder that hangs
like silver music in still air,
and then it flies – hooves over moss,
deer-swift, snake-silent,
no rock cloven,
not a branch touched.
