Audience At Drowned Woman Lake Poem by Doug Stewart

She said she had supernatural eyes, for all I knew
It was so.
She said the moon told her how to behave, I thought then
It was rightly so.
She said the drums chanted where ever she’d go, I heard them,
It was really so.

But Katy bar the door, there was no common thread,
No dancing on moonbeams, just wisps in their stead.
And across the width of Drowned Woman Lake
A loon called for its long dead mate, sounding in a minor key.

She said she’d come from Phoenix on the last night train, but I knew
It wasn’t so.
She said she’d left a hard scrabble life, digging in the dust, and I thought
It wasn’t necessarily so.
She said a clarinet was playing, playing in the band, this time I heard nothing,
It really wasn’t so.

Night was slowly fading, becoming rosy dawn, a Robin and the lonely
Loon changed places in the sky, and the note rose from the minor key to
Sing in the new day. I wondered what would happen now, to her, to all her
Tales. I turned to face her once again, and just as soon she vanished.