Away With the Fairies
Iona Lee

He has a way with the fairies.
I find him hiding at the bottom of the garden,
that's where they reside, he says.
By the dried leaves of last Autumn
and fruit stones turned to cyanide
when Summer starts to harden.

I find him pining by the tree stem,
by the stilt roots of screw pines
as thick as arms, as thick as brittle fingers.
They're as thick as thieves, he says,
I never see them.

When we met,
me wandering white,
plucking double roses
in the milk moon light,
my man he was a magic thing.
My Tam Lin, my changeling,
with a face that filled the sky,
a body stretched across the sea.
He was the twirling world back then
and the world belonged to me.