The Sídhe Discomfits Marx

Numb, the body;

the phantom limb.

A wasteland opens: desert, ice, skin,

the yawning maw of cosmos.

Strangers meet and part strangers,

like ghosts

or reincarnated souls who have

no memory of one another;

or the changeling children full grown, 

leaves in their hair they do not notice,

but they feel a shiver of light when

they walk softly on moss, and

their burdens lessen with every step

away and further, their footprints

in the old world, while the new panics.

The alien other bleeds red blood,

like every stranger like every 

frostbitten vein that thaws,

in secret, or forgotten.