NB

 

There's no reason you need now to know 

But someday it'll be useful, maybe, to've been told that

Three or four or seven blocks away from 

Your starter house (where you've been 

For thirty-two years because it's

Sometimes hard to get started and there

May be no good reason to since if destiny's

All this while been desperately looking for you 

What hope it'll find you if you blow along

Before every stiff wind?) there's a storage room where

Unemployed shadows, some in almost mint condition

And others with the ragged look that comes from being

Too long on the run from their enemies, gather.

Perhaps you'll have sudden call for a new shadow

That can't be traced or possibly you'll be looking

For advice on entering the shadow trade 

Or maybe you'll never have call to remember

That to find your new best friends it's important

To turn left then right and don't look back.

SMOKE

 

The first time you smell it

You think " There;s no mistaking it;

That's the smell of burning bone."

BELONGING

 

My Grandfather Joe was a changeling

Small and precise and wary and 

Out of place in a large, vague family.

His brothers and sisters wore glasses;

He could count the feathers on a bird

Three miles away. (I started to write four

But his ghost shook its head at me).

He was not one to forget an injury

Over time he found that the grudges

His soft-natured kin couldn't keep

All came to live with him. 

Through intermediaries

The demons who'd left him as a joke

Offered to take hin back but his family

Refused. He knew this because Lena,

His sister, told him during a chess match,

Hoping to put him off his game.

AFTER FIRE

 

Suppose for just one day

Iron's child knows how to burn 

Sunset makes things as before 

Except the world's full

Of drifting steel ashes

SUPPLY PROBLEMS

 

Thx for yr order

Regret infrm o/o nightingales

Cn supply nightmares, nightjars, nightrobes,

Martingales or gallowglasses.

Lightning rods on order expect soonest

We appreciate yr bsnes 

SUBSTITUTION

 

During the present

Emergency my great uncle

Dan has agreed, grudgingly,

To play Hermes but only the

Psychopomp bits. Caravans to

Hades will leave each

Afternoon at 3:45 and arrive

By 11 the next morning because

That's how long the Twentieth

Century train took to get from New

York to Chicago when Dan

Rode it in 1938. Those wishing to book

In advance are advised to purchase

Tickets from Dan's wife Jenny and

Not from Jenny's brother Joe.

 

BREAKING THE LAW

 

The purpose, old Ruskin said, of Art

Is to arrest a sunset. Never mind the charge;

We'll figure one out later. Mixed, unlicensed colors

Have smeared streaks across the sky?

Rely on it; something illegal's happened!