The Changling

If I would be poet, wife,
lover, daughter, sister,
she-who-could-be-me might

not be faithful.

A hundred memorized desires
char to flame, stripped winter
branches on whose sleeves

wild fruit once clung

then dropped, obedient
to forces not unlike
the servile shadow

apprenticed to
its jealous mason.

The way things move:
dark honey falling from
the spoon or quickbirds

flattening the wing;

in such a manner,
we become
the changling...

bound and released,
certain then doubtful,
gathered green, sewn in

captured

and constantly
escaping.