An oracular story. The first page of words didn’t make any sense to me, so I just jotted them down and loaded the next page. Same thing, but a pattern emerged in the words. It wasn’t a poem, more a story. I followed it for five pages. Not what I was expecting at all.
Quickly he heaves his shadow over, still not light, no one about. He is ugly his face a wax mask, jabs his stick trawling the deep mud. Only a woman, a mother watches, bare-headed in the wind. I hear her scream, hands flutter, a finger points, and I see what he has dredged from the lake water.
Sea spray makes the heart ache. Stop, I say, but the man turns, shaking his head. The memories return sluggish and reluctant, not like a small child full of life, party-dressed. Where had she been going? Looking for flowers? To hunt for Easter eggs hidden in the grass. Somewhere people are filing into church. I let them, nothing will hurt her now.
She had followed the boy, swishing sticks through the dewy grass. He promised her chocolate, they searched, heads bent. But the moon slept, the sun was hidden. It rained that day I remember, and later, when the party began and music swelled over the water, it was too late.
Heart swollen with fear, the woman could only watch as they beat and beat the unyielding grasses, while the skin of the lake flinched beneath the stinging rain.
Now, at first light, he has come, the one she dreads, and he sees the pink in the mud. She knows what he has found and her heart’s blood pounds. The water roars, black and pitiless. She reaches out, perhaps to snatch the parting threads of a ghost.
The Four Swans 