Stained in shades of bloody red and orange rust
The leaves drift down silently
Beneath the squall of crows –
Hidden in the occasional thud! of fallen acorns-
Something is awakening.
The air is scented with death,
The smell of rotting leaves, moist in the dark soil.
The breeze brings chill,
Moans through branches growing ever more barren
The insects have turned into their silent places –
No cicadas or crickets to be heard anymore.
As I stand in the wooded grove,
The quiet of the forest
And shimmering last rays of golden sun
Wrap me in their embrace.
Peace can be found here, but something lingers
A bitter taste on the air of something yet to appear.
The wind dies, the silence occasionally punctuated by another
Thud! Snap!
More nuts and twigs falling to the forest floor…
The darkness settles, and I sense what had slumbered there begin to awake.
Glimmering, coal-black eyes peering from roots and mushrooms
A teeming of life that had been hidden
In the radiance of the daylight’s fading gold.
These were the wild ones.
The creatures of folktale and legend,
Those our mothers would warn us of.
They watch me with a curiosity,
Resting there in the dark amongst the trees.
But something else is coming
Another force approaches…
At first, they are dull, hardly distinguishable from the pattering of acorns
But then, it registers on the edges of my awareness:
Hoof beats coming from the deeper trees
The Hunt has come to ride again.