CHANGELING

The forest slipped her dry clothes in the still of the night,

waking in the morning wearing some damp, but puffed ball gown

of chartreuse.

She must of drank some spell of sky water

growing twice her size in the untrustworthy mist.

She urges me to shapeshift too, change my form and

try on a skin of damp feathers.

She tells me she has a hundred different smells in this rain

and I am convinced of her argument:

Rain on red flowering currant, resinous and musky.

Rain on decaying grandmother trunk, moldy disintegration.

Rain on white flowering mushrooms, hushed step stools towards the sky.

Rain on invading vine of tangerine honeysuckle, unnatural sweetie.

Rain on fields of ancient fern and newborn fiddleheads.

Rain on soft creaking bridge cautious of my weight.

Rain on smoothed breast, heads tucked down,

Shhh, quiet time now say the birds.

Slugs become rowdy noisemakers instead,

making themselves known with almost every step.

Underground nurseries opening their doors to the moisture,

releasing their charglings of non-native children,

indigenous ones too.

Mostly large bulls,

their muscular backs decorated with tribal tattoos,

a system of spots and markings I can not read.

She has taken me so utterly by surprise

this sodden changeling forest.

She had been wearing the mask of respectability,

but in this light, with her dewy sensuality exposed,

her face turned, plum veins pulsing,

she implores me to play life,

love life as she does.