Hilary Biehl
Bigfoot
Of course she knows what humans are.
Their lights that cloud all but the brightest star
warn her away. And from afar
she watches them pollute the streams,
burn trees, drill, detonate. Sometimes in dreams
she follows them. The landscape seems
to die a little where they walk,
as if their lightest footsteps hollowed rock.
In dreams she understands their talk
but can’t assemble, when she wakes,
the shreds of meaning that their babble makes.
She lies unmoving till day breaks;
at last, with a soft groan, she stirs
and stamps about among the conifers.
If she avoids their world, will hers
be left alone—her woodland haunt
untouched? Solitude draws them like a taunt.
It isn’t even what they want
but what they know that they can take.
New snow floats down. She blinks away a flake.
The silence settles like an ache.
Unqualified
She’s heard that word over and over;
now it echoes through her waiting.
True, she’s known her share of hating,
true, she had a married lover—
still she sits here imitating
hope amid the purple clover.
Elsewhere in the wood, a pretty
virgin is paid by the hour
to recline within a bower.
She is well-prepared with witty
comments and a hothouse flower
from the hiring committee.
She knows nothing of diseases,
disappointments, or stage fright.
“Sense and beauty make her right
for this position,” and it pleases
her to watch the little breezes
tease her hair into the light.
Not for her the quiet cadence
of white hoofbeats in the shade.
Those pursue another glade,
drawn in search of other maidens,
unaware of implications
when the noble head is laid
in the lap that least expected
it. A hand, unqualified
to touch that incandescent hide,
trembles a bit. To be rejected
is familiar, cast aside—
not loved and chosen and protected.
Objects of the public’s scorn,
both are finally at ease
sprawled beneath the fragrant trees:
woman and her unicorn.
No loss brings them to their knees,
no one’s ruined or forlorn.
There is nothing they might mourn
in the music of the bees.
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