A Poem For Halloween

Wolf  Boy

The moon dangles from its severe, black cord

and packets of dew thicken the grass tips.

Everything is blue--the meadow ripe with leaves

blown from the periphery. Instinct

threads the skin of the boy as he strips, the tufts of fur

splintering through his cotton T-shirt and the deer

are startled into their sinewy gait. Hollow sounds.

A cry from the chest where the hunger lives.

The boy will enter the new world through his eye

tonight, afraid of his flushed skin. The blood

rising like the cherry-red tip of a cigarette

pulled towards the mouth with each deep breath.

But he is even more afraid of the dark space of memory--

a flash of speed, wind on his face from some dream,

and the cooled, coppery taste pressed against

his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

The wild is fierce with memory. And his ears

tilt to the soft pad of his paws against the village cobbles

and the darkened cottages whose roofs blossom

with potential accident.  To be one with accident

as to be one with god. To be god is to love

the sudden solitude of night

when the sleeves of the once-body yields

to the muzzle's soft kiss and the wet nap of a licked

burr, nestled into a muddy coat.  Oh, meadow, meadow.

How the moon's beautiful swell nails everything into place:

the tooth's glory plunged deep into the evening's bruise.

The throat, heavy with a hound's velvet "no." 

 ***

;-)