On the day she raised a hand to her liquor-fisted father,

the treasure map appeared like magic, dotted lines looping

from there to where an X marked the spot farthest from

the beatings she would staunchly refuse a berth in the

warehouse of memory, though her dreams left the back

door ajar. With the first step she was out, away, and gone.

As in all epic quests, there were talking beasts and god-sent

friends, a ship of fools — forgone husbands at the oars,

and children she adored who unwittingly pulled her off

course for the decades it took to mother them up to lives

of their own. By then the map was mislaid, and a forgetting

fog rose to steal away the part of her that wished to travel on,

yet even as she sat unspeaking, staring into the distance

unblinking, with a brow pencil she traced the route straight

from arch to arch and on to a place beside her ear where

the target whispered, “Almost there. Almost there.”

©Dana Hughes 6.21.18

ALL ARE WELCOME in ten-inch letters

on the sign by the road where traffic

passes the church invites wingless

visitors to enter and sit where they

choose among smiling members

who claim no pew. But let an osprey

build her nest beneath the cross

of Jesus on the roof where no one

ever goes and hatch a clutch of fragile

chicks that she feeds fish just as

the Lord fed the disciples after he was

raised, and all she’s created will be

swept from the spire like storm-blown

trash with the shove of a push broom.

Her shrieks will shatter the glass of the

lying sign, letters tumbling amid broken

boughs, down, and the pale remains

of innocents not welcome.

©Dana Hughes 6.12.18