The View From Faery

John Anster Fitzgerald

Through the weave of our knotted ways they pushed their straight roads, and our knots remained tangled around them. Our life invisible to them, they lived theirs spun out differently in space and time, so we hardly notice any more as they make their way. But then, on a time, one looks and appears to see, finds a trace in the landscape or something other, half turns onto a twisting path through here, but then does not turn, finding after all nothing but a hint of a way through the trees, a glimpse caught in the corner of an unwary eye or the desire of an instep to turn where there is no turn at all.



We do not call to lure or entrap them, as some may think, though we reveal brief glimpses of ourselves in looking out at them, so that some may catch on us, match our steps on the edge of our world for a while, say they walk with us. Scant knowledge they gain, carrying back tales of hushed glades of enchantment, snagged on threads of space&time that is not their own for a moment, for a footfall, in our world though the next is back in their own and their senses cannot gauge the span between us. We would withdraw. But we cannot, our ways twined around theirs, so we keep our eyes averted, but fail, now and then, to avoid the straight view: to meet the questing sight of the curious few.