There was a high stone wall separating our land—

the small yard, half sand, where my father once grew

tomatoes—from the royal preserve. Years ago,

I was told, the king himself hunted there

among well-ordered trees, made camp by the stream

that coils through its heart. There was even—still it’s there,

though overgrown—a small orchard of sweet peaches

and apricots. Now thickets lie stripped by a tangle of deer,

the high wall overthrown by slow degrees of frost

and thaw. Many days, I have stepped through a breach,

found myself in that odd, forbidden state,

my own and not my own. Once beneath

the government of a twin row of sycamores,

I found the hoofprints of a horse,

each shallow C filled in with tarnished bronze.

Amazed, I followed, until the hooves stopped short

in a clearing by the edge of a small reflecting pool.

A stone in its middle made it look like a human eye.

To one side a thick-trunked magnolia leaned.

This must have been April. The water was clotted

with pink, fleshy petals. I stood wondering

when all at once the surface cleared a moment,

and I started at the sudden flare of my face

peering into the pool, or well, or deep oubliette,

where I lay staring up at the shadowed face,

which hovered like a stone in the sky’s open eye.

Somehow I knew, whoever it was,

he had not come to save me.