Wolf

 

At the far rim of reality

 

Stands the wolf, unknown,

 

Archetype enchanting, ancient spirit,

 

King of his noble kind

 

Who pauses, glancing,

 

Father of the early forest,

 

Alien to the modern world-mind

 

That has been spawned and grown

 

Up from death,

 

From the killing of the magical ones,

 

Hence have arisen

 

All the dank drafts that dally through the restless cage

 

Of hell.

 

Yet the wolf remains

 

Beyond the brittle bell

 

That sounds this bleary

 

Age,

 

Watching,

 

More real than life or death,

 

Than the scurrying days that flit

 

On by like dry falling

 

Leaves

 

Blown

 

Across the desert floor

 

Bare and stark,

 

While the wolf stands still – eternal breath,

 

Blessed being,

 

Beyond the reach of the gray

 

Murmuring minions

 

That practice dark deceit.

 

Yet now their dreary

 

Presence wanes,

 

Soon, gone will they be,

 

There no more,

 

Caught up in the fleet

 

Fires of the ending day,

 

And still the wolf stands,

 

Aloof,

 

Poised to restore his lost domain,

 

Eternal god, under the blue eaves

 

Of the sky, on green woodlands,

 

He who ever was, and is, and is to be,

 

In the tall, sun-winged forest,

 

Ringed all around in rising mist

 

And radiant rains.

 

 

© Sharon St Joan, 2018

 

 

Photo: 119453623 © Olga Konstantinova / Dreamstime.com