I know where my fey lover
           goes
amid roses of May’s unruly
           month.

Impious winds of Winter’s
           ailing,
trailing kisses colder than
           ghosts:

Sunlight ripe as love’s first
           flush
catches thrushes in courting
           throes.

Flowers that flourish in lush
           throng,
Oaken King & May’s Queen
           aglow:

She whose womb all being
           contains,
He whose beard with green leaves
           grows.

I see where my sídhe lover
           goes
amid roses of May’s unruly
           month:

See their sylvan smile flare
           from
bowers heady, as though in
           boast.

Freely would I follow there,
           paying
toll only of my petty mortal
           soul:

As Mab & all her coterie
           know,
Love’s cost must always be
           whole.

[Scott J. Couturier is a Rhysling-nominated poet and prose writer of the weird, liminal, and darkly fantastic. His work has appeared in numerous venues, including The Audient Void, Spectral Realms, Tales from the Magician’s Skull, Space and Time Magazine, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and Weirdbook. His first collection of Weird fiction, The Box, will be released June 2022 by Hybrid Sequence Media; his collection of autumnal & folk horror verse, I Awaken In October, is forthcoming fall 2022 from Jackanapes Press. Currently he works as a copy and content editor for Mission Point Press, living an obscure reverie in the wilds of northern Michigan with his partner/live-in editor and two cats.]