Pigs Might Fly

He made her a bed from fallen willow,
turned the greenwood of its wedlock head,
pillowed it plump with a bolstered sham.
He sewed her a cover of rough spun yarn,
stitched her in time to his cold comfort farm.
She smarted with the salt of his keeping,
wept buckets of tears at every squealing,
till she and the pigs were steeped in the brine.

The homespun wives came at full moon shine,
touting black cat tales, notions, concoctions.
She bought their threads, a-penny-a-thought
wove the skeins to a web of schemes
fixed it high in the wishing tree.
He said she could leave when pigs might fly
but she and the pigs wanted earthly things.
He made her a bed and there he would lie,
counting his sheep to eternity.

Stella Wulf lives in South West France. Her work has appeared in The Screech Owl, Prole, The Stare’s Nest and Message in a Bottle. In 2012 she won third place in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly poetry competition. She is currently studying towards an MA in Creative Writing with Lancaster University. She is also an artist and her work can be seen on her websitehttp://www.stellawulf.com