A raft of keys
fanned out
across your desk,
each one built
for some door somewhere.
You know
about locks,
tumblers, picks,
but you won’t go
to that black room
until you
make a guess
you can’t take back.
She will stay trapped—
unseen,
unseeing.
No riddle
needs to be solved
but your certainty
must go.
Leap or fall
blind.
Burn your books
and forget how words mean.
Random notes
dropped for you to read:
The keys
guard staffs
and open melody.
She waits
for her own theme
to rise,
for you to sing
in spite
of your untamed voice.
Doors will swing
wide,
paths appear
but you may orchestrate
nothing.
She arrives,
hearing what she sees.
Mark J. Mitchell’s latest novel, The Magic War just appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work has appeared in the several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. Three of his chapbooks— Three Visitors, Lent, 1999, and Artifacts and Relics—and the novel, Knight Prisoner are available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.. He lives with his wife the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster and makes a living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco.
A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/