scavenger

There was a child just waiting
to be taken, so I took him.
I called him many, many names
trying to arrive at the one.

In the end he drifted
between several and in and
out of this world always
a cygnet among drakelings.

I want to tell him where
he came from but I have for-
gotten the exact latitude
of the willow he leaned against

as if he had a cigarette to
offer, a rolled clove sweet
as the sisters he would never
have being fey and thus

sister enough for himself.
His brothers have never fully
processed his wild typography
though they love him like

courier–this messenger from
dark thicket, this abandoned
deer left to starve among thorns
before he wandered out

to live. I know a mother should
not worry about origin or tragic
outcome, able to give all to what’s
fond–any shiny, shiny thing.

But I am no mother, not to any
of these animals I’ve kept close
and let change near me. Maybe
a collector of sorts: a watcher

in the woods, a poet standing
stick-like in the field arms out-
stretched in futile star, the crow
who pays that ache no mind.