Starlet

This long poem was first published in the 1998 World Fantasy Convention program. I was quite honored to have it selected for this publication, my first poem to be published. It was inspired by a particular actress I admired at the time, but magically seems to have relevance today.

I hope you enjoy it.


Courting the Fairy Queen

How shall I meet the fair Fay Queen?
Not by clever words or devious plots,
nor by sleepless watch.
I am drunk with wine
and something more.
My arms embrace only air,
my lips kiss only each other.
I wish this sanguine pang would cease,
replaced by love's anguished bliss.
By my frustration is complete:
my impossible desire
impossible reality.

The Fay Queen smiles
cheeks bright and high,
hair of threaded night
and eyes of liquid shadow.
Her magic only she knows,
though her charms are known to all.
Under greened hill she hides,
comes out to dance before the rain.

I spy her through my crystal sphere
for I too am magical.
Wizard or sorcerer,
spellbinder; all have I been called.
She is a grown woman,
then a little girl--
changeling in her form,
divine in her presence.
Yet my conjurations,
thaumaturgic words
are frail and weak,
swept away as a hand through a spider's web.

The Fairies all sing
to their Queen.
She beats her lateen wings
and leads them in the light.
She presents little hauteur,
only a bit from confident station--
her saturnine right.
I think she controls the seasons,
for wintery snows never deaden her fairy realm.
At night with fire flies she flits
among the luminescent glistening greens
of leaves and grasses enlivened.
Down upon a pond's embankment she alights
joining the fairies repose
listening to the choral frogs
and the crickets chirping meter.
By day she chances a walk
through flowers wild and tall,
between their shadowed stems,
not dark or glum,
but a natural stain-glassed hall.
It is here she is alone,
though not lonely,
in silent contemplation.
I cannot guess, nor my crystal reveal,
her thoughts.
Sometimes she rides upon a caterpillar,
her furry coach of luxery;
shadows of violet, red, and green
wash over her, eroding weariness.

From a gurgling spring she drinks,
and in it she bathes.
It is then (and only then) I turn away,
believing my intention to respect modesty
though knowing I protect sanity.
This spring, what to the fay is a river,
seems to touch every tree in their wood.
It cradles their fair hill
then empties into the choral pond.
It rages over pebbles,
carves toad-high canyons as it winds.
For me it has a special memory:
here it was I first saw the Fairy Queen--
before she claimed her crown,
before she entertained her hosts,
before she reigned in Fairy.
In a boat, a milkweed pod, she rode
gently over pebbled rapids,
saluting ever tree,
greeting every thrush,
singing of the world.

From where fairies arrive, no one knows with certainty;
some are born from flower scents,
some from the rustle of leaves,
but she it is said
comes from the scent that light makes
when shining through the thunder of a waterfall.
Some there were who feared her,
some who distrusted her,
who did not like her.
They mocked strange garments she prefered.
They mocked her for sailing alone
upon a milkweed pod
on a stream apart from them.
They--who seeked to secure their own position
by sacrificing her with swagger and fist--
they harassed and laughed at her naked broken spirit.
But she knows a truth
as she lay in her boat on its floor:
That this River reaches to the sea;
all else is tributary.

I in wintery dress espy
from the coldness of my tower grey,
her winsome form cavorting. . .
now with midges, now a moth.
I should crush this crystal of mine,
perverse window it is,
cruel transmitter
of one-way affection.
But though I know its limitations,
that the earthworm is far dearer to her,
that this glass is for light and not emotion,
I still descry her dance,
and hope.
Yet how shall I,
the wizard-poet know
before I am mad
to quit the crystal
and find reality?

This is what I observe of the Fay Queen:
Though she has her hill
speckled with daisies,
she is quite unsettled.
Though she is Queen of Fairies,
she is prone to frolicking
and raising a voice to their cause
while sharing her trove with many.
Though she flies with special favor,
higher up with birds and such,
she longs to be even more;
if she revealed her desire, all would faint.

I high in my dungeon tower,
my ankles shackled to the floor,
watch through my crystal orb
this Fay Queen in revelry.
My hands are free to write
and that I do on magic paper;
infinite are its blackened pages
while resting on my table.
I etch white letters from each black page,
trying to find her light there,
trying to uncover the brightness of her face,
or the smile in her eyes.
Though I scribe and carve,
the lettered form finds no meaning.
If I could release my legs,
to her I'd walk; to her, understanding.
My only release, my only walk,
is that imagined on the page.
If I can write enough, perhaps the page's weight
will sunder my bindings, drive me through the floor.
Or maybe a pile, growing,
scattered around me,
becomes my own dark hill.
Then would she, intrigued, come?
So I write--not knowing exactly why,
not knowing if any poet-wizard's words
are enough to delight a Fairy Queen.
Faith in the magic is all I have.

I wish at times I could reach the crystal ball
to raise it high,
to drop it, smash it, weep over it.
Such is the cruelness of this self-imposed torture.

I rue the day I clamped these shackles
only slightly less than the day I lost the key.
I had the key once when I was young,
had the lock in my hands,
looked at them both--
thought about their intricate connection
their infinite pleasure,
and to be free.
But the lock slipped away,
the key lost.
Oh the days I searched for that key!
days, months, years,
until my exile had a life,
an importance,
of its own,
an entity that overpowers me
and would even now had I the locksmith near.
It is beyond control
and so I write
to forge a key of pages and words.
Insecurity had led me to this tower
to its chains for shelter;
here I shall stay
in solitude
for eternity.

I think our spirits touch
for they greet each other
in my fretted dreams.
She hands me ancient books of hers,
and I to her a kiss.
So it is that in my dreams
she is there
Fay Queen,
cradling my weary soul.
It is as though at times she seeks me out,
but she knows not where I am.
What magical paradox, this sorcerer's irony!
That she is free to seek me out,
yet oblivious;
while I in my tower chained and starving,
know of her and where she is.
This Kingdom is large,
borders from sea to sea,
Should I be so prideful to think no others chained,
to think that in the course of chance she should find only me?
No, not pride, I say, no ego involved;
it is these odds against me that I fear.

I make a pillow of my chains
to rest my dreary head,
to lie as if on your soft rising
falling breast,
and find a dream of starlight in your hair.

In the waking morn of my stone tower,
outside the frosted window,
clear icicles descend.
I've watched them grow
from teeth
to daggers,
until they hang as thick as iron bars.
Then it was one warmer day,
warm enough to snow, that I
with my back against the round room wall
espied a slow prancing spider moving toward me.
It crawled along the wall horizontally
on some natural errand
or perhaps it simply tired of its web;
something so lovely to me
is to it so bland.
With what weak conjurations I had,
I bade it stop and listen for awhile.
I told her ( for female she was )
of my longing to know the Fairy Queen.
No sense of time had I as I spoke,
but she listened well for being earless.
And as I sat gazing sideways at Ms. Spider,
I felt a sense of commiseration,
and a fleeting hope.
I ensorcelled Ms. Spider by passion alone
and she agreed to deliver
under bitter snow and tumbling winds
a message to the Queen.
She delved through a crack in the floor
saying quite earnestly before she left,
"I shall ride a snow flake if need be there."
And I laughed for such generosity.

For days I watched my crystal sphere,
waiting for some clarion of deliverance.
But as time clouded my message's memory,
I began to ponder the self-sacrifice of spiders.

But lo, one day upon the Queen's back
 I did see my eight-legged messenger.
Ms. Spider tapped one long leg insistently
as would you or I with a finger on a shoulder tap.
But the Fay Queen did not respond; she didn't notice.
And, all too clear to me now, who should heed
the soft touch of a voiceless spider
when the Queen's fairies are thronged,
her devotees legion.

Her attention is too remote to catch
in my spider's web.

Every time I see her in my crystal orb
I notice something new,
something wondrous:
Merrily with friends she plays,
and there,
her right eye flutters
like a moth's wing in the light of her laughter.

And I cannot bear her angry eyes
when there is occasion for her wrath.
I turn away,
though I hear her words,
and I grieve for those seconds of beauty lost.

Closer now, more intense.

What it is you do inside your hill, I can only imagine.
This hill you've piled and built around you.
At the sentry's gate, the gatekeepers watch--
few are admitted, and then they only Fay.
Fay Princes come and go, some remaining longer than others.
With each entry into your hill, I believe they will stay
for ever,
and for ever shall I stay chained in a dream of despair.
But this is how complete my delusion is:
That even should you find a Prince,
that even should my life be known to you,
that then you'd leave your Prince for me.
There are times when I indulge fantasy,
when I imagine a life beneath your enchanted hill:
O marvelous naiads there are in pools of aquamarine,
or dryads playing in the wood.
I imagine unicorns sparing tete-a-tete
and though your home is under hill,
a roof of heaven hangs above your head,
and there among the clouds, a thousand butterflies.
Dragons there are, but you are strong;
your magic keeps them at bay.
Would you protect me, shelter me,
slight wizard that I am, from these scaled wyverns.
And I often wonder what duties keep you away.
Would living there
in Fairy
find me more alone
more chained
than I am today?

Stop! There is madness complete!
Read and see:
Not have I known her, and I dream of her home.
Not have I spoken to her, and I conjure predicaments.
Not have I my name upon her lips, and I believe us wed.
Idiocy take me quick!
The rye fields whisper her name and she hears,
while I with screams to heaven
remain unbidden.
How deep I mine for madness,
how close I feel to release.
Surely life with reality respite
is (safer) than insanity embraced.

So my book becomes weighty
despite its magical whisper.
Soon I must decide--
shall it shear my chains or ignite a beacon.
On this I ponder;
while turning one page, another appears,
I fill one with white letters
and another begs enlightenment.

I write
and write
with aching hands--
furious pages turn.
The table cracks;
it splinters.
I write on stacks,
I write in crevices,
I push and shove,
swimming with no place to rest,
to sleep,
I'm buoyed by the gathering sea of dark paper--
engulfing.

Epiphany.

A Magus in white sacramental robes
appears,
gifts me his knowledge:
That this magic tome of mine,
its pages surrounding me,
covering me,
is neither a beacon for my desire
nor hammer and anvil for my chains;
it is both, it is either first, neither last. . .
Such does a Magus visit, so does he leave.

So the dark beacon flashes through the light,
so its light beats upon my chains to shatter.
I am free at last--
I am Universe.

My words have reached you, my hill of letters intrigued.
Yet you have seen only the smoke of my fire, thinking  it incense.
My passion races on the wind, burns under the forest growth.
And though you are the Fay Queen, this passion frightens you away.

There it is, the final irony;
that the love so desired, so sought after,
the love to release me,
is frightened by its own intensity,
consumed by its heat,
unknown
and lost.

Now the prisoner is my heart.
What good that I am free, my heart a lonely captive?
I say,
a prisoner knows only hope,
        a free man reality.