Letters to the MoonMake me a willow cabin at your gate
And call upon my soul within the house
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night
-Shakespeare
If I had never met him
I would have dreamed him into being
-Anzia Yezierska
He follows me through the pages of every book I read,
lurking in the mists of shadowy metaphors
and romancing me with descriptive narrative.
He is stealthy, doubt him not,
yet I can still feel the warmth of his hands
on every leather-bound volume I open.
He hides in corners, camouflaged in rhetoric.
He brazenly trespasses:
the stranger at the train depot in a travel essay,
or the friend of a friend of a friend in a novel
Sometimes I hear him catch his breath as
I rush headlong into passages
filled with messages he left for me.
I am not alone.
Now
as I crease the folds of paper beneath bone,
it is my turn.
I will lure him out of hiding with every image,
every word on paper,
and he will be mine.
©1997 Beth Rang
Published in Prologue, May 1999
Call me Medusa,
if you dare.
Serpentine slithering
in the mirror,
hissing in the wild
fury of a sleepless night.
The vipers
gloat and menace
indiscriminately
celebrating their victory.
Tease it and repent.
©1996 Beth Rang
Published in Gypsy Cab, Winter 1997
and Prologue, May 1999
Letters to the Moon
Whimsey Wilde