The Queen of the Woods came down by today to see
our small woodland village
With wings of a fire unlikened to smoke we saw her
descend with a clap
The flap of a thunder falling to earth was that signal
that brought us all in
To gather around, to hear what she preached, to see her
with our own eyes
The mighty Queen, the Eternal ghost! That spirit that lingers
for days after death!
A hypnotic owl, horned and crowned in the starlight of
the night's passion
She was. And she was that she was, an I am message
of the spirit of God within us
Dilating eyes of yellow burst flame and comet dust
of dying stars shook off her wings
Her stare a death sentence in words of old time that
struck fear into all
Something changed when she turned her head
clear around, like a top
Spinning on her feathered neck, a countenance
of gold overtook the night
And filled us with moonbeams of joy untold,
her face now wise and kind
Stilling all in our hearts, calming all storm in perfect
peace, primal yet serene
And she spoke
At first a hoot, which warbled to speech and shook
the trees with it's timbre
"Death is not the end!" she cried to our crowd
"And stories never die!
Look to the clearest night where I fly
and see my spirit there.
I am the last artwork of a woman whose hand
shook till death,
Frail and skinned to the bone. Unable to paint she colored me
before her last days,
Pouring all of herself into the lines, the contours
of my feathered sleek
Body and soul, purple on nights and haloed on
sun-dead twilights
She may have died when the ice of death's chains
took her in her sleep
But here I stand, here I perch, here I fly
through the mind
Of her great-grandson, who saw that picture hung
on a wall
In her room in the nursing home, and now
ever since
I live in his mind as a symbol of something, something
deeper than death
Something that reaches beyond
time's heavy sword
Or the loss of breath itself: it's the power
of a moment's vision."
With these words the voice of the Queen of the Woods
turned back to hoots
And off she flew to the great northern sky
where she lives in the glory of dream-light.
