Something Precious

He comes to me feral with shadowy starving whispers
Tiptoeing across bare legged flits of murmured rendezvous
Skulking lightly upon creaking planks of wincing willow trees
And dead bark festooned upon lodgepole pine and guts of yew

Our age old dance of entangled limbs and Luna’s cast caught
Aposematic called bluff, flushed spades take two queens lost
Aureate autumnal bounty gathered upon antlered crown
Tickled tummies of amaranthine burst lupine fade into frost

I take refuge in curled chestnut tails of foxes and aspen copses
Tumbling down clumsy fawning first stanced awkward dances
My fear for him grows asymptotically almost fully but not quite
Maybe we were lovers, perhaps in another life and circumstance

Winter coats brandish bled fur and first snow blown freeze
I feel the moon mourn me inside its nautilus trellised hunch
Paint your music across my spiraling double stranded sequence
Let’s drink our Rubicon, hold our noses, howl and spit this plunge

Eventually the sum of infinity catches up to my panting Achilles
The wolf closes, encircles, halving Zeno’s paradox striking distance
Something precious like a final breath betwixt time’s pendent jaws
My single bleated prayer offered up as a lamb just before his pounce

Words By: Cara Feral
Art: Shanna Trumbly