The Howl
Deep into the night-abiding trees let free the howl
of my heart(that false doppelgänger, that unreliable narrator.)
Course it there, where darkness shakes down her hair,
fleet where the small hands of rain stroke my cheek
lightly,lightly, not so bitter as kisses, not so salt as tears,
til it comes to a stopping.
There's a fire panting to light up the hedgerows,
to make wilder things writhe from shadows bending,
those fetches the old gods make to beguile us dappling the void
the new ones provide, movement alone frantic with silence
save for crackle and spit and the skin drum's thud
that still beats in my wrist.
Each day dawns with feet cut off, limping,limping,
in the year-turning dark. Willow-wisps glow
in the grove of dancing,coming to draw the light
from the road, off to the flicker where worlds rub skins,
to flames and fetches, to what's kindling now
where heartwood was riven, heat banked in
each unlit log is given to the season of time burning,
of leaves crumbling and forest dreaming the hand I'm holding,
dreaming and singing in the sough where rain-wind
ears the night. Can a child born to houses ever discern it
where all that runs in smoke and mist is changed
and confounded, rounded off without logic
to fire that howls in my skull
what it won't let me know;
it's my own fetch that's come
to dance in the hedgerow.
October 2022
posted for earthweal's
(and inspired by Brendan's Kindling in the Forest of Light and Shadow
Challenge)
Images: Dancing Dryads, 1879, © Albert Pinkham Ryder Public Domain
Wolves,(detail) © Andrew Wyeth Fair Use
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