(Note: This poem was originally written in 1995 or ’96 and revised in 2021. It was published in Issue 5 of Wine Cellar press in October 2021.)

a Found Fragment  in your Firetorn Books
 for the Venerable Cotton

  ] and so my sisters
what shall we ask  of the wise oracle
tell of our tall lover  is he true
will we find favor  in the fair court
singing our songs  to the sad king
but that trembling tree  its angles trouble us
casting queer shadows  where haunted crows bicker
and they will not whisper  a word of our fate
unjust or gentle  aching or [