The Prince
(from Grannie's Garden)
by Mary E. Choo
For Milo Duke
On her way
to somewhere in
the garden,
she discovered
him in a thicket
behind the
hedge.
She wasn’t
afraid,
though his
deer-like face and mossy antlers
gave her pause,
and she
wondered at his crooked human body
wrapped loosely
in rags.
When she asked
why he was hiding,
he tried to
explain,
but it was
difficult at first;
she couldn’t
quite grasp his fear of outsiders,
or why he
wanted to sing.
As summer wore
on into deep-woods days,
he admired her
talent with roses,
and when she wove
scented garlands among his horns
he convinced
her that he was moved.
He taught her
many songs by autumn,
taking care
with her secrets.
Over her
gardening basket, the countless flowers,
they often held
hands,
so it was no
surprise when winter drew near
that he asked
her to make a choice.
From her high
December window,
she kept watch
on the path.
When he finally
appeared,
she marvelled
at the moonlight
on his wild
green crown,
recalling
roses, his soft, dark eyes,
and below, as
she had promised
the unlocked
door.
About the Author:
Mary Choo’s poems, short stories and
articles have appeared in or been accepted by a wide variety
of magazines, anthologies and online publications. Her
credits include the Sword and Sorceress, Northern Frights
and Tesseracts anthology series, ChiZine,
Dreams and Nightmares, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry,
Star*Line and The Rhysling Anthology. Her work
has been on the preliminary ballots of the Nebula and the
Bram Stoker Awards (poetry collection) and the final ballot
of the Aurora Awards, and her poem "Christina" (ChiZine
#22), was selected for an honorable mention in The Year’s
Best Fantasy and Horror for 2004 (Datlow, Link
and Grant). Another poem, "Keepers (from Grannie’s Garden),"
which appeared in ChiZine # 24, was nominated in the
short poem category for the 2006 Rhysling Award. She lives
in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada.
Poem © 2006 Mary E. Choo.
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