Say the Boy

Say the boy has sprouted two stag horns overnight. Say a shadow leapt
    upon him where he lay, and they suddenly appeared,
viscid but not demonic—not even in the way they'd grown from skull
    and crown: by magic, yes, but not the sort
that whispers from a lumbering wight, whose hands cradle a sprig of ivy
in the cold snap of the water-clock, or a workaday concoction
    of threadbare dolly, pushpins, and a cauldron grimacing out its dregs.
No—say instead this boy was visited by the residue of enchantment,

    the spell alighting here in the unimagined past—say, in this very spot—
and never yet released. Say this boy, a naughty boy,
    a sleeves-in-tatters boy of uncertain consequence, is only the escrow
of a magic squawking its way from here to there, and someday
    there to you: except, this time, it was him
and not you. Say the boy is no longer a boy at all, now fracturing light
    with a loll of his head, now weary of his own majesty,
now bowing his branches whenever fearful, or curious, or falling in love.

Copyright © 2006 Seth Abramson All rights reserved
from Columbia Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission