In The Wilderness

As I was wondering all alone,
walking through I woods, I
thought I saw a faerie alight upon a tree.
It was a most fair faerie, though I
had never seen one yet before then.
I asked for a name, and she smiled
a dream-enchanted smile, and said:
"Call me Ishmael," in a voice so sweet and low
it seemed to be like every song I had never heard before.
I asked her why she was here, and what for,
and from when she came.
She just trilled a gentle laugh that brought mice out to play.
I gave her my name, freely, from daring and love.
She started, shocked, a hand raised pale as the moon
to refuse the gift, and something I thought foreign
to such a countenance rose before me like a
bleak wind upon a moon-fled light. I asked:
"Why your fear?" and the mice fled my voice.

Then, from the heavens, came down judgement,
or a calling; the brown streak through the sky, silent,
stealth weapon of the world, diving: she never had time to scream.
The owl, perhaps aiming for a mouse, struck.
I stood where she had died for a long time after, soaked with rain
and shivering from cold. I did not like what I had seen,
not in the Owl's hoot, nor in the last gasp of her true name.
We had never named our daughter, who had died stillborn,
but I know the name I would have called her, had it been mine to choose.

I went home to the wife that night, with a heavy heart indeed.
She asked why I was sad, and I could not bring myself to say.
I merely said it was the weather, and the coldness of the season.
I warmed myself before the fire, and the urge
to cast myself upon the flames was most strong.
I had some hot chocolate instead and asked, quietly,
if she had ever thought of adopting, since we were
too old to have more children. I offered up,
to the fire and the night wind, a name.
And the glint outside the window was no shooting star
Or angel with wings, but only a reflection of a spark,
but, even so, a man can hope.