One Day Before the Tide Changed

He walked along the rocks
in the cool spring air,
ignoring the wind in his hair,
and how it tugged on his clothes.
He stopped to scratch his nose
and looked out over the horizon,
to where the sea met the sky,
and watched.

As he listened to the waves
and the seabirds crying
as they circled, flying
almost out of sight
he did not know why
he felt so restless -
the day left him breathless,
captured by the old magic
of wind and wave and light.


He thought for a moment
of his garden and his books
and the way his wife looks
when he talks of poetry,
and thought about Prufrock,
who talked of mermaids in the sea,
and fog and things that would not be,
and wondered about tomorrow.

Turning to go,
he did not see the shadowed shape
run her comb one last time
while he recited a hopeless rhyme
through perfect green hair,
then slip off the rocks into the sea
pondering the unknown mystery
of land and tree and earth,
the strange songs only humans sang.

They both went on their way,
he to the land, she to the bay
back to their ordinary lives
touched by the shoreline's magic.

The Tale the Lilitu Told

You ask?
I shall tell you then,
O brave man,
as you sit there,
beneath the silver moon,
while the breeze stirs the leaves,
while the incense wafts up to the sky
in pale, ghostly tendrils,
and the fire burns low,
and you smile at me,
here,
in this gods-forsaken place.

I shall tell you then,
a tale of how a maiden
running from what she knew,
the taste of the whip,
a man's unwanted touch
things she feared more than the wilderness,
moved across the wastes
from shadow to shadow,
desperate in her thirst,
hiding from the hard ways of men,
until she found
the more unfathomable ways
of those who are not men,
not really.

His eyes glowed golden in the midnight,
and his oiled hair shone
beneath the moon, fragrant.
Even though I hid, shaking like a leaf,
in the cleft of a rock he should not have noticed,
he did,
and gazing at me,
seeing into night's depth,
his golden eyes pierced me.
His limbs grew smoke-like,
wrapping around me in the shadows,
tasting my skin,
touching me until I burned with fire.
Fire, yes,
I was the fuel he needed,
and as he drew me out of the cleft,
he consumed me utterly.

Thus I am what you find tonight,
a voice in the shadows,
wanting,
longing,
hungry.
I would run away, if I were you,
lest you find me
wrapping my hunger all around you,
kissing your golden skin
beneath the moonlight,
ready at last
to feed.




The Assyrian lilitû were said to prey upon children and women and were described as associated with lions, storms, desert, and disease. They were highly sexually predatory towards men but were unable to copulate normally. They were thought to dwell in waste, desolate, and desert places.

I Dreamed

I dreamed last night
of a dragon,
green scaled
fire-breathing
fork-tongued
and hungry.

Tired of ransacking the countryside,
he took a hint from his more civilized cousins,
and shape-shifted
through myriad possibilities
until he became a man,
intense and charismatic,
who then became  a politician.

He ate the supporters
of his opponents
when the press wasn't looking,
and an opponent or two
for appetizers,
and a businessman at times for dessert,
had shiny brass buttons on his chest,
and a trophy wife
in the best Jackie Kennedy fashion,
wore an expensive suit
and wanted to rule the world.

Eh, sounds like a Doctor Who episode,
I thought, waking up,
or maybe real life -
haven't been able to decide.