In leafy canopy or gallivanting
cornfield trespass, twig-strewn woodland track
to epiphanic clearing, windy rise
to hilltop menhir, bracing lakeside stomp
et cetera, you are restored, self-present
in self-forgetting, Caliban's broad church your
inner sanctum.
As children in those wolf-encircled woods
by dwindling campfire wait for guardians
from hillside blown or fallen in the lake,
spreadeagled figures who have lost their hats,
so amateurs of spirit restively
sit out the Kali Yuga's unrelenting
interregnum.
"Our father", says one, "is a mighty hunter,
for whom a wolf is nothing but a pelt
with halitosis". Something nearby starts,
dashes from patch to patch of undergrowth.
The youngest sniffles. None will live to morning,
nor find between those severing incisors
inward meaning.
Beautiful creatures though. But so are urban
foxes, and less partial to your children.
Iron like irony keeps well at bay
that distant howling. Foxes rut and screech
beneath my window, gnaw discarded wings,
in matters of high spirit not remotely
interested.