The moon, a sickle on the cloth of night,
I sat where elder roots weave down to stone,
And drank the silence, ancient and alone,
Where whispered mosses drink the silver light.
Then through the stillness, sharp and serpent-thin,
A cry arose—a keen, unearthly strain—
Not owl, nor vixen from her hunger-pain,
But like a soul that had not known its sin.
“A babe!” thought I, “where no hearth-fire is laid,
Beneath the blackthorn, cradled by the cold!”
My mortal heart, in its young kindness bold,
Leapt to the gauntlet that the wildwood laid.
I saw it there, in tattered bracken pressed,
A small thing weeping for the moon’s cold breast.
But as I rose, the oak-voice stayed my tread:
“Be still, and listen with a different ear.”
I shed my pity like a cloak of fear,
And let the forest’s older wisdom in instead.
Then was the cry unspun, and I could hear
The rasp of stars, the language of the frost,
The tangled tale of everything that’s lost
And chooses, in its losing, to be clear.
Not human child, but wild and gingered sprite—
A fox-kin singing to the naked dark,
Each shriek a silver, unrelenting spark
That honed the edge of this untamed night.
Its voice, the forge where raw creation calls,
The beauty that resides within the briars,
The ache that fuels the planetary fires,
The dirge that graces every thing that falls.
No babe to save, but holy, wild lament,
A thread within the web I’d near unwove.
I bowed, and offered up my false, kind love
To truths only the root and rock have meant.
Now when the fox-song breaks the moon’s decree,
I hear no cry for help from mortal stock,
But green sap rising through the granite block,
And my own wildness, calling back to me.
