When I died I rose
to meet myself,
not quite as
shadowed leaves
touch leaves that fall
on water, meeting
palm to palm. Then
verges ever on
the yet-to-be,
is never this,
now, here. Nowhere
a kiss, and onward
from that instant O
and O. I wake
no travelling.
On either bank,
the trees are rooted
in their fall.
The river’s night here,
and the leaves
rise falling, self
toward self unmet.
The crowd is parted
by the prow.
Greer Gilman’s mythic fantasies are Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales and Moonwise. Her metaphysical mysteries set in Ben Jonson’s London are Cry Murder! In a Small Voice and Exit, Pursued by a Bear. She has written on the languages of the fantastic, on archetypes of girls in fantasy, and on Sylvia Townsend Warner. Among them, her works have won the Tiptree (Otherwise), World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and Crawford awards. She likes to say she does everything James Joyce ever did, only backward and in high heels.
