Winter Estate
By Jill Koenigsdorf
The mist was a tease today when
what was needed, was rain.
Is it the same as passing through
a cloud?
The newts here
wriggle onto their backs
displaying yellow bellies,
playful & twisty,
before lumbering, dinosaur-like,
off the path,
& the Poison Oak, devoid of its greasy, warning
leaves,
more deadly, here, just bare sticks.
Fog makes everything more mysterious, therefore more
beautiful-
the slack phone wires vanishing, becoming
trapeze lines into infinity, or else
the wires of a swinging bridge over
some fern-choked chasm miles below, maybe in
a tropical locale.
The woods grew darker, became an estate,
a mansion of rooms needing exploration,
My friend Marian lived in a mansion.
There was a dumbwaiter that fascinated us,
a travelling box that would deliver
toys to the foyer closet, soiled clothing to
the basement, &
her mother’s many empty highball glasses bleeding
their own, melted ice
to the kitchen.
We sent each other things,
from floor to floor,
toast, wildflowers, the family cat,
using the dumbwaiter. We wanted to climb
aboard, shape shift, travel
inside the walls, be
in a place no one else had seen,
but were already too big.
This mansion was her home,
lonely and strange, a place
of experiments-
of no father-
of secret nooks and crannies-
like the forest today.
I do not feel too big for this place,
my skills proportionate
to what light remains.
The booming of a Great Horned Owl
to his mate resounds and thrills,
amplifies
in my chest.
When she calls back to him,
it is like a great gust of wind-
making the shaggy locks of
Spanish Moss tremble,
the branches they hang from
all but invisible.
