She watches the window waiting
for the owl to arrive with a letter
in its beak with her name on it,
or perhaps for a faun to show up
in plain clothes and escort her
to the gates of Camp Half Blood
where she might be claimed
as the daughter of Aphrodite.
Oh how she prays for any
formal invitation to a place
where she would discover she is something
more than just a normal girl
with normal talents and a normal
life. I don’t tell her that there
are invitations even now
for her to discover her true nature—
in the pond, on the trunk of the cottonwood,
in the river rocks, in the moss—
all of them magic, just waiting
for her to open them.