The Unicorn

Summary

It wasn't there, and yet we believed in it,

the milk-white beast, barleycorn twist of its

impossible horn, horn now proven

to be narwhal tusk; oh how we love proof.

It wove itself into the tapestry

of myth where we chained it in gold filigree;

let's say, yes, it is gold that enslaves it.

Its chaste self saves us if we imagine it.

In the garden where the pomegranate

evolves its own bloody secret

the creature that has never been

tentatively puts out one silver hoof,

shimmering and oblique as an antique

mirror into which we can no longer see.