The Wild Hunt

 Edin Chavez

The Wild Hunt

All the day I ran

to catch you

outsmart you

outrun the rattling feet 

disappeared in the dark,

flown before me.

Crouched in the thicket panting

watching,

learning your ways;

where you are hard and canny,

where a sudden strike might find

the heart.

Under the standing sun
and under

 the dying moon I tracked you,

nosed your faint spoor till I dropped on the rocks,

hot with the calling of the blood, hearing

fever chattering its teeth in the empty night.

Down

in the village a dead woman lies—

so you’ve been this way

noiseless and gone.

In the torchlight her face at last unfocused

seems to smile.

Must I avenge her

 now she's free,

though she was the enemy?

though you and she

are neither real,

live nor dead,

but only running shadows 

where some hellhound passed me

on the grassy hillside hiding.

November 1987

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub
 

This is an old poem, written in my late thirties, very lightly revised, originally posted back when I first started blogging here at Verse Escape. Forgive me for all these oldies--I'll hopefully have wrestled some of my current victims into submission by next week.

Photo Courtesy of Edin Chavez

Used with Permission. All Rights Reserved

Edin Chavez Photo Gallery

Vertigo

Vertigo

The heart is

blind but spinning, like a jewel

transparent in darkness.

If there were light,

igniting colors…

but even in the blind black

colors wait for a chance to break

out of the holding stone

Their sleeping presence spins and

turns inside each facet,

seeds within a pod rusting in the wind,

germ within the seed that soon will know

quickness in the green;

only give light

to what already exists.

Only give the meaning to the form.

But I don’t think

this is a thing that you can do.

You don’t know which the gem, which the jeweler

which the instrument, or

what of me is determined by your incessant tapping

and what by the temper of the stone.

You think I’m soft metal, an abradable plate

blank before you etch it with the acid of your desire,

scratched by the stylus that swings between your legs

to give back in my life the imprint of your will.

But I am diamond hard,

and it’s hard to shape what spins in darkness,

and hard to see what’s carved

in the fretwork of scars upon the holding stone;

wind in the dead leaves dancing

a horn of honey poured into the sea

a network of veins full flushed with color

that waits for light to be given

to what already exists.

September 1987, revised February 2011

Posted for Magpie Tales # 53

Uncredited photo of a salt cellar provided by Magpie Tales removed

The Wild Hunt

 Edin Chavez

The Wild Hunt

All the day I ran

to catch you

outsmart you

outrun the rattling feet 

disappeared in the night,

flown before me.

Crouched in the thicket panting

watching,

learning your ways;

where you are hard and protected,

where a sudden strike might find

the heart.

Under the standing sun and

under the flying moon I tracked you,

followed your spoor till I dropped on the rocks,

hot with the calling of the blood,

chilled with sweat in the empty night.

Down

in the village a dead woman lies—

So you’ve been this way

noiseless and gone.

In the torchlight her face at last unfocused

seems to smile.

Must I avenge her

though she is free,

though she was the enemy?

though you and she are

neither real,

live nor dead,

but only running shadows 

where some hellhound passed me

on the grassy hillside hiding.

November 1987

Photo Courtesy of Edin Chavez

All Rights Reserved

Edin Chavez Photo Gallery

Questions of Ownership

Questions of Ownership

To own

but not necessarily to have

the price must be paid in full.

An experience of both cost and pleasure.

Full owner of my sorrow,

dark full face of my moon

turned away to

the small dots that look you back,

am I not here?

Under that faceless black moon

am I not even dark wind that lifts your hair?

Many truths coexist.

Many rivers run to the unfilled sea.

Many waters may be one or several,

equivocal,

all equally vocal.

All silent when they run dry.

In the child of our bodies

I see your arabesque of bones

Your dizzy hesitation that flees

to rigid purpose.

You and he, the moon, the beach, the grass,

and the rivers that run so endlessly

dwell and spring and 

consume all here, so

where am I then?

In these combined relics and scars I own,

these snow white bones and sepia

distillates of time?

January 1987

Posted for OneShotWednesday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Photo: Question of Money, by anolobb on flick'r
shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 License