Rapunzel Retold

Walled in

inside the high tower

I find the young woman

('just a girl, really,' 

she was sometimes told)

who dangled her long golden hair

softly over the faces of her babies,

her babies who

with smiles and tiny grabbing fingers

travelled up those strands to gaze in her eyes,

hoisting their brand-new awareness

in through the open window

of mother love.

When then was now, 

she sat in a house on the ground

with not only windows but doors that opened.

And that was fine for many years

while the babies thrived and grew.

How could she know

one was growing wrong?

To her eyes, the traces were faint

mostly invisible.

The thing became apparent

gradually. Even in his youth

and early manhood

she didn't see.

An infection, of sorts, in the brain –

or a chunk of it missing?

She has her ideas by now,

but even now can only guess.

The youngest son in the tales

meets many challenges, no?

Makes amazing journeys.

His were into delusion.

His were into hatred.

Finally, after years of tears,

she performed a ritual of distant healing

for the troubled man who had become

fearful to her, and unknown.

Then she expunged him from her life,

as had many others.

It was not for cruelty that her Sorceress

blocked behind high walls of stone

a long-ago mother playing with her babies,

and that youngest, enchanting child

with his early gifts for drawing and poetry,

his precocious insights, and the smile 

that still, in memory, makes her heart turn over.

I felt there was more for me to explore in the Rapunzel archetype, and sure enough....