Stories always promise: with arrival at The End, a transformation to overcome the odds— great insight, love; recovery, reunion. But The End is also unpredictable, even when it appears to have sorted everything into reward, punishment, conclusion. The child turns out to be a changeling or orphan, then grows up believing he is heir to nothing but a singular ordinariness. Under the trees, goats go to work cropping the grass. A horse head swings from a bridge, ragged mane rippling. The heir to prophecy looks up, recognizes something of himself in that tableau of anonymous suffering. When the water ripples, he hears his name.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.