ciotoli – d.s. butterworth, american poet, fiction and essay author, professor of creative writing and literature at gonzaga university collaborates with florence newspaper - the florence newspaper

CIOTOLI – D.S. Butterworth, American poet, fiction and essay author, professor of creative writing and literature at Gonzaga University collaborates with Florence Newspaper

D.S. Butterworth, American poet, fiction and essay author, professor of creative writing and literature at Gonzaga, Spokane. His work Waiting for the Rain was published by Algonquin Books. Our newspaper will publish one of his works every Sunday.

Queen Thiedberge Escapes from Tour de la Reine

The Queen’s tower rises in the heart of the King.
She foresees the coming of Geneva and Savoy

like weather gathering to storm the castle.
She witnessed her husband’s infidelities in the glow

from the hearth, in ribbons of glacial wash
intertwined like snakes. Prison is release

from the predatory eye of the King
who mints his zeal in his slaves’ foundlings.

A crow with tattered wings drops from the turret
like a sycamore leaf. A nuthatch flies out

of the fireplace. From across the lake, Alps teach
the ice of her burning how to flame. Perhaps she’ll go

there when she escapes her rage, to study how rock and snow
define the limits of things. The surprise is how terrible

endurance is without love. Love—a thimble’s dream
of sea. The mortar of her coffinette crumbles

beneath the hoardings. Against her eyelid
machiolations impress the blueclad relief

of the sky. The face of the monk beside the hawk house
shines even at this distance. Soon he will show her the walls

at Talloires. Her stairs shine like moons recording the days
of her passing. Too, moonlight shines on the staircase

inside that other tower filled with water, the place
that describes the shape of the life she dares to live

inside her rage. From the stables signs the animals
scare at a fox or at others of the King’s cruelties. Tournette

waits in the distance, inclining toward further heights.
Mouse slips from cat under the stone bench.

Lothaire’s hawk perches on the fence of the sheepfold.
Bone-stairs lead from her tower into the waters of Annecy.

Now, for safe passage. The king wenches in the old dwelling.
Cur sniffs in corners. The fire spits.

From the forest, wolves howl the same hunger,
thoroughly human, into which the Queen descends.

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