Eidola

Everything unreal is alike.
A flying turtle, a flying wife.
Whatever her needs were, unreal,
alike, extremes that touch
(the high, the low, the sickening
and burgeoning of twilight),
were those of the plague-birds,
preying on mice; whatever their needs were,
conceit, caprice, to turn to drink
or stand up straight, extremes that touch,
were hers; the same.
And whether she closed her eyes,
as she entered the nebulous fetch,
or extended her wild neck
(because something inside it was bright,
so bright it needed a cover),
is whether they sought the end
as they charged the deadly water,
or gloried in their liberty, in maxima,
Norwegian mice—whatever she had to do,
it must have been in raging
to leave her brood. To leave her eggs unburied
with a sideways look,
see them in the jewelweed,
clean with moon, blackening with absence,
anonymous, not true.