Poetry

When they ask me how was my journey this winter,

I will tell them I met an elf in a hemlock forest

one half-mile off the beaten path

in the southern Blue Ridge Mountains.

 

I will tell them the truth about Georgianus leprechauns

shuffling through the white pine needles, whispering 

back to the rapids, of spring on the Toccoa River

and peeking up over at me from a granitic outcropping,

winking just as you’d expect.

 

He was dressed in pale lichen green with oak-leaf epaulettes,

had wings, mind you, of ferns, and wore a bright orange

mushroom cap. He did not tip his hat for me;

he beckoned with a finger from within his foggy grove

just over the Fannin County line.

 

And before he said a word to me, he hooted to the owls

and a parliament of them who-who’d in return in consultation:

let her in.

 

                                             -in memoriam Beau Cutts