LindaAnn LoSchiavo,
Apprenticed to the Night

I drew a map of your footsteps smudged among
The rows, as you examined the gravestones.

For decades you betrayed me, while speaking
To her. That suspicious accident blurred
Your memory about codes, details, names,
The funeral. You’ll never get her back.

A potion sealed your fate, inkwelled into
Your bones, condemned you to wander the
Necropolis. Confused ghost: meet your world.

Apprenticed to the Night

“But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:
She never tasted such before, ...”
— “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti, 1862

A great horned owl inveigled me to talk
About indulging darkness, persuasive
Till I agreed. Is this where wanderlust
Began? A hoot that hints where wildness feeds?
Its sharp beak pierced a pinhole in the sky.
I wriggled in, beyond benighted dark,
Baptized by stardust thick enough to cleanse
The past, reversing terrors, shame that I’m
Forbidden to announce except in dreams.
Outwalking my long shadow outwalked pain
Whose lexicon’s imprinted on my brain.
Night’s majesty proposed a holiday -
Vacationing from reason, escaping
In midnight’s monochrome and cloud forest,
Relieved to be apprenticed to its king,
Always reliant on his entourage,
Recruiting aides for sunless pageantry.
For this I halted time-wasting shut-eye,
Grew feathers, shed discredited panic,
Committed to my new apprenticeship,
Convinced high altitude’s superior
To earth, its trash cans, crime, graffiti, grime.
But too soon, temperamental owl withdrew,
Unwilling to comply — unlock the sky —
As if to say, “Not what was meant at all!”

Denied, I questioned why it now refused.
Go ask Rossetti’s sweet-tooth Laura if
Removing goblin fruit erased desire.
Ask Aesop’s fox if it still pined for grapes.
Apprenticed to the Night

Its lunar eyes implored me to retrain
My gaze, accept mundanity, enjoy
Scant years allotted to my fading name.
Abandoned by my feathered friend, released
From night’s immensity, I watched the dull
Sublunary sphere wink. Hurry sundown!

My Mother’s Ghost Was Dancing

That year morphine became a minuet,
Sweet pianissimo. Its soft pedals stilled
Anguish, reproached relentless timekeeping -
Tick, tick — mortality’s metronome.
Before my mother died at home, she learned
That cancer’s like a Depression Era
Endurance contest: the dance marathon,
Odds stacked against her, swaying in slow mode.
Despite defiant hair, a plump physique
Deceiving guests, illness hokey-pokeyed
Her organs, shook breasts off, rhumbaed her cells,
Vitality an unremembered song,
Mere noise until sweet exhalations ceased.
Her corpse was wheeled away. The tempo changed.
Dynamic force reclaimed the rooms, infirm
No longer. Energy expressed intent
As if Mom were at a debutante’s ball,
Star of the floor show, sequined, applauded.
The mind’s embrasures, freed from pain’s embrace,
Seek entertainment, longing to erase
What’s real. Belonging to another realm -
Where everyone’s transparent — Mom’s got plans
She’s telepathed. But first she wants to dance.

A coldness sidles up to seize my hand.