Behind the Ruins of Archdale Plantation

I found the Green Knight.
He took the form of a fallen oak,
centuries old— each arm
a mammoth tusk, lichen coated
kraken tentacles. His squat trunk
an empty face. Roots wizened
by the sky like a well-oiled crown.
Each elbow and wrinkled eye —
topographic maps or fingerprints
ripples or geologic layers or
stretch-marked underbelly.
How many knelt before him
willingly though still in fear?
I crawled his bends like a toddler
and kissed my hands to his bark.
I begged him for truths in a dark world,
the same which shook him down.

***

Pell Williams is an MFA Candidate for Poetry and Arts and Cultural Management at the College of Charleston, received her BA in Writing Seminars with a minor in Film and Media from Johns Hopkins University, and served as the 2019 Artist in Residence for the Dry Tortugas National Park. Her work has been published or is forthcoming at the Birmingham Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Humana Obscura, and Free Verse Press among others. Learn more at www.pellwrites.wordpress.com.