The Bean Seller's Song by Kelly Jarvis

He had only a cow,

milky and white,

and my own hungry look in his youthful eyes.

The beans screamed in my pocket,

singing their lies. I smoothed

my white beard, nodded my head.

“Good morning, Jack,” I said.

I spun him a story of how high he could climb,

leaves licking his body

like soft feathered wings.

The beans whispered their false rhyme of jewel-hued night,

thick bars of silver, and ruby-red rings.

They warbled of white hens who would lay golden eggs,

and hummed the hushed, haunted tunes of gilded harp strings.

The boy’s eyes grew as wide as the sky.

I rattled the beans like coins in my hand.

Some say it was a lowly cow who brought about creation,

lapping god-like forms from salted frost

with her rough pink tongue.

How I long to sip sweet streams of cream

to quell the dangerous, darkling dreams

that remind me of my time in the sky

and the terrible things I have done.

Let the boy climb high through thick webbed vines

to marvel at the wonders of the Milky Way.

I have traded my beans for Milky White,

and I will wallow on earth the rest of my days.

Kelly Jarvis (she/her) works as the Assistant Editor for The Fairy Tale Magazine. Her poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, Mermaids Monthly, Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, A Moon of One’s Own, The Magic of Us, and Corvid Queen. Her short fiction has appeared in The Chamber Magazine and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers. She can be found at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/

Image from Pixabay.