The Lilac Wood
“The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.”
Some say only a virgin soul
Undulled by the world and
The unbearable weight of naming things
Will see cloven prints
In the fallen snow.
An old mare shakes her head.
Is she one of them instead?
“Go down to the edge of the wood,”
She said.
“Go breathe the ancient, wild peace.
Go hear the whirring beat
Of a thousand humming bees.”
But the lilac wood waits silent,
Cut down and frozen over.
The flow of an eternal spring
Will put the crack in winter’s back.
Shattered ice, shattered spell,
And the curse turns backwards on itself.
(7.13.12 - One of my all time favorite fantasy novels is The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, partly for its whimsy, and partly because its take on the loss of magic and innocence has haunted me for years. Trying to do justice to the spirit of the book. Threw in a little Narnia for good measure.)
