The Woodsman
by JoSelle Vanderhooft
When they speak of him
this frail woodsman with clay-cracking hands,
his heart choked up with bracken and grey grass
they name him for a thing of dust and glass
a dog-flinching thing, a coiling coward,
not a man at all.
Now pearls and diamonds wear the dark-haired queen.
She is too young for heavy gowns but not,
it seems, for sentences and proclamations.
Pale as snow yet firm as ice she stands
before the shining court to speak his doom.
Not the dungeon's chill, the hangman's hemp,
not the sting of foreign sand through his worn shoes.
Her fingers softer than the year's first rain
she restores him to his feet and to his place,
liberty his only chastisement.
He knows that he should thank her
just as he knows they whisper through their hands
in the market, in the cedar stables
where dung smolders and flies scatter like jewels
that he is her slave, her dog, her poppet,
not a man at all.
He also knows these deserve no more attention
than mosquitoes whining in the reeds.
Nonetheless their gossip stings his ears
and blisters his once winter-heavy sleeps.
Now, pacing through the trees he tells himself
they have a point. He hates it, yes
(and here he slams his fist against his palm),
but still they have a point.
His life has been bound up in bows and lace.
First, bowed before a wicked queen
whose eyes reflected only kingdoms, pippins,
salt pewter black curls swept out like waves.
Now, before a good queen he must kneel
the very one who shook before his axe
as the swallows fluttered past like knives.
What a thing it is, he tells the sky,
first to heed a woman, then to disobey her
not for outrage nor the threat of Purgatory
that knocks his teeth all through his orisons.
Not for these, but for his own failing heart
that beat against his ribs poor thing, poor thing!
to match the terror in her wide blue eyes.
It was for this, and not for manly justice
that he put by his axe.
What a thing it was to let her go,
this pale step daughter damned for vanity.
To watch her blunder through the undergrowth
to listen to dry leaves crack in her steps
and not to chase her down and catch her up
into his trembling arms and hide her away
as if she were his daughter.
What a thing it was to watch her run,
this girl who had less hope than a fawn in winter
to watch her vanish through the tangled branches,
her slim feet skidding on the mossy rocks
and not to hurl his axe into her back
as if she were a thief.
And what a thing it was to do all this
while standing granite-still yet desperate
for action, for anything except
this queen-enforced passivity.
It's this alone that cracks his frantic nights
into regrets and makes his creaking bones
hang old as time inside his leathery skin.
So when they speak of him at all these days,
this sad woodsman who roams the new queen's woods
shuffling, slow, eyes focused on his feet
they name him for a sad and neutered thing,
a thing of cellulite and silk,
an embarrassment of brokenness,
not a man at all.
Hands in his pockets,
he does not protest.
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