June 23, 2018

Lost Liberty



We never learned what woke her from her slumber,
what caused her to awake and look around
confused, demented, lost, not knowing where
she was. Wide-eyed, she climbed down gingerly
from the perch she'd held these many years,
to creep down off the base, then  step into 
the blue-black water, shoulders shrugged against
the cold, a little gasp, a wrinkled brow.
She waded to the so-familiar shore,
unplaceable and strangely foreign now,
and clambered up the bank, her spikey crown
atilt, its sharp points catching in the branches.
She hasn't got a clue now, where she is.
She wanders on these lonely streets, eyes wide
but vacant, recognizing nothing, feeling
that she ought to know this place. Her copper
gown is stained and ragged. She had dropped
the torch and book in getting off her perch;
they rolled into the water, sank, and dis-
appeared. The passersby avoid her, feel 
ashamed, as in, “How shameful that a poor
demented woman should be on the streets 
like this. Someone should do something.”
None does. They cut the budget. It's too late.

She shuffles on, head down, eyes up, as if
by looking hard she might still find her way. 

—Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG