The Outsider

I ran across a beautiful and disturbing portrait of an undead woman, still wrapped in her funeral swaths, in the portfolio for Jenny Marie, who does photo manipulations. It was macabre and dark and evocative, but there was a certain quality to it that appealed to me and it made me think of Poe, and perhaps a story of a young man who kills his lover and she rises, but is unable to find him. but his guilt gets the better of him and he steps into her blind path, ready to take his punishment.
So for the latest addition to the Fields of Arbol, I couldn't resist writing a poem of a story, based on this piece, entitled

The Outsider

far across the fields I watch, this revenant,
this remnant of a woman as she wanders wide
of my path, her wrath blind with dust and decay
that has sapped her senses, but not her rage
at the lover who laid her down to die. I, her betrayer.
and I think back on times in meadows green
and on sheets of satin and gowns of lace
that bare hid her body from my embrace,
all mocked by my evil, all stolen by my greed.
and I step closer, ever closer, to my lover
who has passed the frame of the living
into that of one propelled only by rage
and a sense of a reckoning, of balance.
unfair is it that I should prosper in my evil
while she, who knew not but love and dreams,
should dry and decay under earth and stone,
atoning for my wickedness. and I step closer.
closer to the truth of what I am
and what she was and has become.
and I step closer and call her name in faint voice,
half-praying she does not turn to the sound.
but she does. and we find our peace
as she takes my life and sends me
to my damnation and release.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.