by Lucy Brennan
You may glance away just as she passes;
but she will corner you in books
packed away in the attic,
or damp-soiled in the basement
and you will sit cross-legged,
forgetting the heat from the roof
or the cold of the floor: You have
discovered a launch-pad into space.
You think you do not know her
and yet, a few words of hers
have caught on a bone in your head
and you cannot escape them. She belongs
neither to time nor place. Crone or sage,
ignore her and the loss will be yours:
Wonder, the child she carries around inside her,
is forever being born and never grows old.
— from Juniper Volume 1, Issue 2