Thursday, 26 September 2013

c o n f o n t a t i o n * a n d * c o n s o l a t i o n (wolf part fourteen)


In a moment life can change
A million possibilities
Created by thought and leisured inaction
Are ripped away into but one furrow
And even the concept of possibility
Is made redundant by
The ever present certainty of
The ever present present
Its happening
Its happening now

Wolf wakes, scent-warning, nose-burning,
Fight or flight, this my mate,
You are carcass walking
You are the to-be-shredded
The under-pup who becomes food,
Carcass walking
Leave or Die
Now.

Ardent sees he must attack
Brandishes harpoon and ice axe
Crouches, focussed, makes advance
Knows he doesn’t stand a chance
Romantic fool, you chose to die
In foreign field, under grey sky ?
You think it right ? It is obscene
To die before your love, your Queen
You march to death O best of men ?
What use to any are you then ?
Heroic couplets are no use
Pissing in fear to fill your boots

All flashes before him
He makes a grab and
Picks up snow trodden pelt
In an instant it is done.

From torpor risen
Unexpected guest arrives
 
Unbidden, belov’d

Thinks of springs new buds
Perhaps a summer queen again
Still now, lust pauses

Sheer delight, then fear,
A dread finale opens
No time for straight thoughts

This is no true choice
Made on the wind with cast bones
Mind alert for signs

This is confusion
Witch’s hardness cuts through all
Her wand comes to hand

Ardent puts on pelt
She flinches at old magic
White wolf now gainst grey

A frozen moment of dagger time
Then its teeth against teeth
Throat to throat
Claw paws belly raking
Seeking to disembowel.
Their lover, aghast
Sees fountains of red
Roschach the surrounding snow
Into the direst runes.
No winners here
This is hel’s gate.

But woman’s hardness cuts through all
Wand raised as if to blast all
Such power
Unused for ages
Crackles into life
In an unpleasance of overfamilarity.

All is now doubt
Two wolves sense a seismic shift
And cease combat. And quail.
Wolf speaks first,
A more refined ferocity
Pack mother chose now so we may hunt
and eat the defeated.
Quite a speech for him
But Ardent wolf added no more
To this stark and feral eloquence

The agony of choice
No longer pure, overwhelmed
Wildfire burns in rage

We wait a lifetime
No choices suit one and all
Statues in the snow.

Wounds ache, heartstrings ache,
Elements of compromise ?
Ardent wolf growling

In ancient lands, still strange to me
Their exists a mystery
Orpheus and Eurydice.
She had two husbands
If I recall,
One for summer
One for fall

Wolf sits in on haunches
Hunting and mating here is good
Hunting and mating there is good
And, thinking the deal done,
Licks his wounds
And ignores the others
He is alive
That is ,at least, a result.

You two dare share me ?
Crows settle on palace roof
Hoping for mayhem.
 
She too considers
Reaches her own conclusion
Shows cunning and love

Wand burns with purpose
Old wilder hearts may quake now
 I make my own luck

Daring her wyrd skill
She combines two souls two skins
As one before her

Instinct and ferocity
Romance and politesse
A beast with a poet’s imagination
You tell me if she did wrong.

Shaken, and also deeply stirred
The Ardent Shackleton mark two
Adjusting instinctively,
to his role as spokesperson
asks of her , with clear blue eyes,
You saved us, my love,  why ?

And she whom he could now call again his Jenny
Smiled a summer’s smile
But with a few tears and said
I had many letters from your sister,
A little wild, but sweet ,precise
Saddened by our first defeat,
Asked after me, and my lands,
How things prospered here with me
My favourite dress, what I thought nice
Talked to me as a sister might
And I missed what I had not got
So Ardent Wolf, your Shackle’s gone
Will you now take me as a wife ?

No longer half the world away
And twice the man he’d ever been
Ardent Wolf as pirate prowls
And brings back treasures for his Queen.

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