Therian and Shapeshifter Poetry: Five Poems for the Garden

Phantom Tail

Tamsin Greywillow

I make room for it on chairs.
I step so the door will not catch it.
Nothing is there. I know nothing is there.
I have known it for thirty years.

Still, on the stairs, it balances me,
and in the rain it hangs low and heavy,
and when you came home early, unannounced,
something behind me moved for joy.

Call it a habit of the nerves.
Call it whatever lets you sleep.
I only say I would be lonelier
without the weight I do not have.

What the Heron Knows

Marit Hollowell

That stillness is not waiting.
That the water will bring what it brings.
That one leg is enough to stand on
if you do not argue with the mud.

That gray is a color with its own weather.
That the neck is a question kept folded
until the answer swims under it.
That there is no hurry in hunger.

I have a desk, a telephone, a name.
I am very seldom late.
But ask me what I am at the day's edge
and I will stand a long time before I say.

Field Notes at Moonrise

Corbin Ashlark

Nine in the evening. Clear. Light wind from the west.
The moon comes up behind the water tower,
round as a coin, and does nothing to me.
I write that down. It is worth writing down.

No change in pulse. No fur. No holy dread.
A dog two gardens over starts to bark
and I do not answer. I note that, too.
I am a careful keeper of what is so.

And yet. The grass smells louder than at noon.
My shoulders have come down. The street is mine
the way a path is, to the one who walks it.
Observation ends. I stay out a while.

The Skin in the Rafters

Linnea Frostbeck

She was not unhappy. Say that first.
She loved the bread, the lamp, the small warm heads.
She learned the names of things that stay indoors.
She sang, and did not say what tongue it was.

And every evening when the tide was full
she stood a little at the open door,
not grieving, only listening, the way
you listen for your name across a field.

We tell it as a story about theft.
It is. But it is also about this:
that you can love a house with your whole heart
and still be made of water.

The Gate Stands Open

Bracken Moorlight

Come in by the gate. It is never shut.
The wolf is asleep with her chin on the lamb's flank.
The fox has put his nine tails away for the evening.
Nobody here will ask you what you are.

There is a tree, and under it a bench,
and four small rivers going out from the roots.
Sit down. The naming can be done tomorrow.
It has waited this long. It is good at waiting.

The light goes green, then gold, then goes.
Something with wings is settling in the cypress.
Whatever shape you came in, keep it, or put it by.
The garden is the same garden either way.

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