Across time, over Earth, through the sea – I have seen existence.
In search of hope, of truth, of a new song, I traverse the wildness of foreign lands.
A journey alongside the mists of the unknown
Seeping between hills, a stampede of galloping stallions
with manes tangled among the stars, plunging over waterfalls into rocky rapids.
Flowing through the Amazon, a web of black and green –
slithering undergrowth, writhing and grasping for life.
Downstream, towers of sunny scales, higher than buildings,
the heat of a billion grains blowing one o’er the other.
A small village at the foot of the Swiss Alps,
cozy under a blanket of snow, tucked in by its rocky father.
I sing my tales to the strum of my lute, and my hat is filled.
Those towns are warm, even in Winter, with thatched roofs and crowded squares.
A peaceful lake collects at the foot of a family of earthen humps,
fed in plenty by the eternal flowing brook through lush evergreens.
Cloudlike sand absorbs my footmarks at the ocean’s edge, and
i gaze onto that vast expanse of life.
A sea breeze unfurls my hair in a crimson cape,
a salty spray drenches my face as the waters make my travels buoyant.
My music pales in comparison to the chorus of seagulls and the humpback’s hum.
Atop a waveworn precipice, I observe
the melting of cerulean sky into the depths of yawning sea –
a candle somewhere on the horizon extinguished with a cold, wet pinch.
Yes, my journey has led me across the Earth’s beautiful broken skin –
And yet again I find myself
back in the forest of Hatuga
as if I’d never left at all.
Did I ever?
No matter how far I go,
no matter how long I wander,
no matter if I seek to escape its borders
or hope to melt away into that sweet wilderness,
I make my way back here again –
or it makes its way to me.
Is it not curious?
Is it not Divine?
It Is.

The Great Horned Owl, that regal bird,
Builds a nest to please his wife,
One of mutual hopes and dreams
But of sticks and bones most of all.

And when his hoots of love are heard
His nest is ready for the strife
That comes with lowly lurking schemes
Of mice who curse and plan its fall.

Blessed hatchlings further spur
This knothole home to prove not rife
With harmless-seeming secret seams
That slip between before they wrawl.

What comes before is mere foreword
To the order of a purposed life;
A nest is built on selfless themes
And in a tree, though bent, still tall.

Waking finds me through a conflicted feeling. As
the white powder of an unforgiving blizzard
burns my forest, this feeling churns in my
gizzard; I do not want to go outside, where
the wind winds whistling ‘round, but it is my
duty and I know I will regret staying holed
up in here, wondering at such a peculiar
feeling. My nest of Lavender breaks under
the contraction of sharp talons, and the petals stick
to secondary feathers as I stretch my wings, warm them
with a furious flapping that disturbs the old
ghosts lingering for shelter as I slumbered. But
the time has not yet come for me to work them in flight.
I poke my head beyond the hollowed knothole
of my home, and clamber down the Grand Fir
that breaks the sky. But the sky has been replaced
with a vast ocean of glittering lights, stars that
freckle heaven’s face with musical twinkles, soon
lost even to my piercing eyes as I descend the Fir’s
trunk to the forest floor and am chilled to the core
of my hollowed bones by this mammoth snowstorm.

But I have seen worse – I have been worse, and a
Midwinter’s husky heaving is not enough to hold me
prisoner of that hole that beckons with tender warmth. Somewhere
the Something calls – has been calling, for a long time –
and it is especially for me that it calls. I must meet this Something
to let it know that I have heard it. Though the sleet-like fog
is weak to my immovable form, my ancient eyes grow
foggy and blind. Seeking that Something’s call,
I sing my own reply:
“Who are you, who wander here –
Lost, alone, and incomplete?
Hark this tender, lulling sigh
Lilting lithely through my trees,
Bidding you seek out a form
Following swiftly behind
As it extends caring claw,
Helping you go on your way.”

“Oh, hello there. That’s a very pretty tune…Do you
live around here?” shivered a withered, delicate voice
behind me. Huddled in the cold, wrapped in a moth-
bitten old coat far too large for her hunched body,
stood a lone woman as old as the northern glacier
and as beaten as the Galanthus. Still she offered two
creases of the cheek curved shivering upwards
at me, and plodded ever so slowly to where I loomed,
streamer-like primaries and Supercilium flowing in
the heavy storm, a dark aura in this, a dark Winter’s night.
But the elderly woman approached me all the same,
even with delight in her heart, though I could crush
her like an insect. But I would not, for that is not
who I am. “I am the Custodian of this endless forest,
and have risen from my slumber in harkening to
your call. And who, my child, might you be?”

The old woman erupted with a timeless laugh, the
laugh of one whom has seen all humor and graces
this particular joke in light of them all. “I don’t
remember much, but I do know that I haven’t
been a child for a long time.” Her eye gleamed
as the specks above and her joints creaked when
she finally stood before me, frail, no taller than
my breast. But the life was in her and ignited
a hearth within that would not be extinguished.
I leaned over, bill inches away from crooked nose.

“What do you seek, aged woman, lost in my
forlorn forest, set apart from time and space,
when the sun has been shot down by the lunar
hunter, his pallid wolves seeking the blood of hope?”

Once again, the woman laughed in my face –
I found her courage to be endearing and true.

“What do I seek? Something that makes sense,
I’d say, and I’m not sure your poetry does the trick.
But maybe, since I’m so very cold, the best thing
for this old skeleton is a good deal of warmth.
After that, maybe some pleasant company, happy
people, and then maybe I’ll feel happy, too, and most
likely more than just that. I prefer to be pragmatic
and rational, and a place as I have described seems
the ticket. Do you know any place like that?”

“I do, in fact, know a place better than all that.
It is called the Pasture. Shall I take you there?”

The old woman stroked my collar affectionately.

“You are a good, kind sort of strange creature,
and I will trust your judgment since I, relatively,
have not been on the Earth for many years at all.”

A baleful growling resonated among the Sitka spruces –
The red wolves from the Wild did not agree, for
the pack was starved by the storm they created, and
desired the old woman should become their prey.

“Begone, hounds from Hell! This young soul has
made her decision. You have no teeth to bite, no
claws to scratch, so why do you resist the outcome
of a battle you cannot win?” With an angelic shriek
I pounced upon the Alpha, with his cracked hooves
and scrawny hide, rending him to shreds with my
claws and beak. He put up no fight, knowing it was
lost long ago, and the rest of the mutts bounded off
yelping through the empty wood back to the Wild.
The old woman ever remained calm and faithful.

“They were yours, child of my own heart, and
have followed you ever since you were born.
You could never see them, but faced them often,
and they are the Something that you needed to
be freed of. But now that you are, you are ready
to come with me into the Pasture?” Her head bowed
in the nod of one who cannot resist, but knows that
there is nothing to fear. The folds of her reptilian
skin had begun to smooth, and her eyes widened
as the bags sunk into plush cheeks. So youth, which
lost her along the way, was finding its path home
to the decaying form it had lost sight of, though
she had only come back to where it starts.

“I’ve been ready for a long time.”

There is no deal, there is no pain, there is
no trick, there is only the understanding
between I and them, but it always means
the world to me, taking those like this old
woman across the gates of the Pasture. I
pluck her gently into the sky, above the raging
blizzard below blinding the Earth and freezing
its core, my powerful wings pumping as
we soar over the canopy of wooden tundra,
the cacophony of pine and pain, a common
commotion, only natural, but below she and I.
The elderly woman does not fear the height, or
glance down once, or even hold fast to my
steady tarsi for support; she is still as a
lamb in the wool of its mother, serene and content.

“I know who I am now.” She says with a
sigh. “Do you pity those whom will come later?”
“No, because they will come later, and patience
is always the most logical of reactions to the
most unfamiliar of situations.” As she had said,
so it was. And I knew without asking that she
had long since made up her mind about the
Pasture, and was content, and could think of
nothing else – This was natural, and good, and right.

With a single sweep of my magnificent wings,
we ascend vertically into the sky, through the grey mass
of ill-tempered thunderheads, splitting the
moribund atmosphere, snipping the
very intricately and beautifully stitched
fabric of time; we pass by the cheerful
Sopranos of Spring, the lax Altos of
Summer, the eerie Basses of Fall, and
the festive Tenors of Winter, all a grand
ballroom dance in the cosmos, rushing
together to greet us. The old woman takes
on a new dance partner, eyes forward and
smiling ahead; she will go on to the Pasture.
I will follow, but not yet – Not yet.

With farewell, so I greet
the newly budding Earth with a tune
harking Dawn’s triumph over Night.
I return in turn from whence I came
until the next poor wandering name.

“Draw thee hither, crinkled Miss,
For pitch-blind is the land.
You’ve seen what Winter has in store
For lives decreasing, days of yore
That once meant everything to you
Become a curse, their blessed hue
Gone with every passing snow
Unto when? No one shall know
But you, who treasure Death’s sweet kiss,
Finally received on Yonder Side.”
I have been here since your birth;
Life comes and goes, yet I remain
to support you despite your false belief
that I mean to harm you, hurt you,
give you grief. But this is not true.
I wait for you, here, in forest thick,
where souls are lost and life is found,
and you shall know that I am but
your friend, to guide you safely home.

And the Pasture rings with song:

“Hark ye the Dirge of Ashen Oak,
Tome of Wood – Herald of Life –
Reaching forth cross darkest hour
To sow its seeds in deep despair
Among the souls
And settle there.
The hope resides in heartheld soil –
Roots burrow and blossoms bloom –
Still, there is time to turn towards light
Should you wander forlorn in forest old –
Seek watching Spirit,
Warm wings enfold.”

Broccoli, Artichoke, Soybean, Leek,
Onion, Pumpkin, Daikon, Asparagus, Sugar-Snap Peas,
Cucumber, Tomato, Avocado, Squash:
A plethora of Mother Earth’s delectable
bounty, bathed in the scarlet yawn of the drowsy
solar watchman. The crops were ripe for plucking
from their cozy dirt dens, plump and tender, their
most vulnerable state at the peak of their very
lives. Maple leaves whirl through the rows
of tilled soil and the produce so neatly
packaged in soiled cribs, at once so helpful and
so troublesome. The brown, crinkly leaves will rot,
will replenish the soil, will fertilize the seeds
of next year’s vegetables, but as they are
now they are in the way of my Autumn
Harvest. But the rabbits and the squirrels and the
badgers and the frogs gather the leaves into a large
pile, for conversion to fertilizer later. They are merry workers,
probably because they know I will reward them with
a few carrots and celery, but there is no shame in work
that happens to give one a reason for working.

I gather the produce in a wheelbarrow
fashioned from the skin of a deceased
olive tree, delicately situating each crop,
for they bruise easily. My companions are in a
jovial mood, laughing and dancing through the garden;
as they gather leaves and sticks and fruit and bugs;
I mark their closeness, their familiarity, and I
mark it as my own. Pleased with the display,
I join them in song:
“Who are you, who wander here –
Lost, alone, and incomplete?
Hark this tender, lulling sigh
Lilting lithely through my trees,
Bidding you seek out a form
Following swiftly behind
As it extends caring claw,
Helping you go on your way.”

For a moment all is silent, when the groundhogs –
possessing a phonographic memory – join in my
merry tune. The others catch on instantly
and we parade around the garden beneath
that jovial twilight, which seemed to pulsate
to the beat of our cacophonous harmony.
But suddenly the monkeys fled, and the deer followed
suite, then the entire choir vanished into the forest
and I was alone. Yet I was not alone –
A muscular man of dark visage, hair only early beginning to grey,
stumbled headlong from between the trees and
trampled my Cabbages. I had not called him
intentionally, but he came, eyes narrowed in
exasperation and irritation. I regard him uneasily,
for there is something in the way that he is that
makes him appear unfit for the Pasture.

Breathing hard, seeing me, is a sigh of
relief to the strange man, bent over like a
broken horse run in too many circles. He limps
forward and forcefully grabs my wing,
Glaring up at me as if the one in control –
Teeth clenched down on a bleeding tongue,
clashing with the red of the sunset and the red
in his eyes. But, still, I see a weary soul, and so
I offer it a fresh turnip, but the turnip is
brutally batted out of my caring grip

“Who are you, breathless man, lost in my
forlorn forest, set apart from time and space,
when the sun is soaring home to roost behind
a world pristine as it cleaves its own life to live?”

The man opened his desert-cracked mouth –
a wheeze that reeked of some festered disease.

“I don’t have time for your damn poetry
or your stupid mind-games. How the Hell
do I get out of this forest? Huh? You
damn hermit, you’ll tell me how to leave this
place right now, or I swear I’ll show you just
what a desperate man can do! Got it?”
But I didn’t quite get what he meant
or why he said what he meant
or how he could think he could do it.

“I would be happy to lead you from here
to the joyful confines of the Pasture.”

The man was earnestly oddly displeased.

“Jesus Christ, you freak, enough of this!
I just want to know how to leave,
not go to some freaking pasture!”

And then he struck me. With the look of
the Wild in his mouth, he struck me with all
the might he could muster. But, to me,
‘twas as impotent as the nip of a flea.

“Trust my word, for the Pasture
is where you don’t know that you
would want to be. Here, take this spinach –
it tastes of honey and dew – to replenish your
strength for the journey ahead. Why do
you run? Why do you fear? If you’d
simply look behind, then it becomes
clear that nothing is chasing you but
your own worried thoughts. Find yourself
calm – rest, for my garden will do you no harm.”

With the dawn of dusk his face relaxed
and the spinach hesitantly received from
outstretched claw, fluttering into his shaking
palms like the falling leaves – but these leaves
are verdant with life. A sad smile cracked
his lips before he opened them to accept
my gift – But why? Why does he pull them
back from hungry mouth, why do his eyes
grow round as the moon overthrowing the sun,
why does his entire frame tremble as he
trips to the ground and scrambles away –
across to the edge of my garden, pointing
a toothmarked finger my way, muttering.

“My god, I know who you are.”

The spinach leaves, birthed from seeds of
the Pasture, a brilliant blend of green
and gold, are sullied beneath the terrified man.
“Oh, son of man, why should you fear me?”
It seems I had appeared to him one of his brethren,
for now he observed my talons and wings and eyes
and feathers and beak for what they were, and not
in the way he had painted them in
his warped mind. “Stay away from me! I know you!
I know you!” And so now he knew me
when he didn’t before. “Please, just have a
leaf of spinach; it will help.” But, like a cornered
beast, he rushed at me; I did not move, and he
continued on until he reached my ancient
wheelbarrow, and rent a handle free.

“Calm yourself, man, and ask why
you fight me.” But the man was no longer
a man, lunging and shouting and swinging
the wheelbarrow’s handle at me. At first he
missed on purpose, though I expected the blow,
and I knew it was coming when it did come,
and the wood of the olive tree splintered
against my hollow bones, and clanged
in sorrow across the crimson forest.

The vainness of his efforts reached the
man, now without a weapon; staring at
me for seconds with the shock of a child
caught in an act he could not believe he
committed, The poor fool ran for my forest,
believing I would pursue him – but I did not.
I watched him until his flailing, hobbling
figure was lost – even to me – under the cerulean
curtain of night descending upon the final
faint glow of dusk. And then, I saw them –
drawn by his confused panic– the silky,
rippling muscles of the White Lions,
descending after him – into the Wild. But
my care has somberly returned to the garden.

With farewell, so I greet
twilight’s blessed hearth with a tune
to remind the worked their need to rest;
I return in turn from whence I came
until the next poor wandering name.

“Draw thee hither, greying Sir,
When twilight bears its dusks.
Down in droves the wrinkled trees
Drop crunchy, holed, decaying leaves –
Why do you tremble, turn to flee,
Upon the merest glimpse of me?
The end of day pulls fast its grip,
But further into vines you slip
When ‘tis better you not needless stir
And hushed go to Yonder Side.”

In the Deep
Of a Pond
There lived a spark-el-ling Koi;
His scales a sheen of amber and his fins bright straw-ber-ry
His lovely coat of shingles rip-pling peace-ful-ly
A glowing crimson shadow – beneath waves – swimming free
The fish of dreams –
The dream of fish –
His song the waters sing:

Fiddle-dee diddle-dum lie
Kiddle-lie didd-lae diddl-a-dle
Shiddle tiddle jiddle foe-fie
Riddle-do diddle-dee giddle-mo rumpum.

Now this Koi,
‘Twas a king,
Re-vered by his fishy fellows;
They wor-shipped bubbles blown blithely be-twixt his gills
Every cur-rent passing, they relished with their chills
His wake flocked with spec-tat-ors traveling through the rills
Devoted subjects –
Subjective devotion –
His song the fishies sing:

Riddle-do diddle-dee giddle-mo rumpum
Shiddle tiddle jiddle foe-fie
Kiddle-lie didd-lae diddl-a-dle
Fiddle-dee diddle-dum lie.

King Koi
Was so kind,
His heart as bright as his scales;
He’d tell his brothers stories on life’s puz-zl-ing ties
On face and space and birds and words and land and sea and sky
On how to love eachother wi-thout wanting reason why
The truth of life –
The living truth –
His song the Eagles sing:

Shiddle tiddle jiddle foe-fie
Riddle-do diddle-dee giddle-mo rumpum
Fiddle-dee diddle-dum lie
Kiddle-lie didd-lae diddl-a-dle.

One morn’,
Unawares,
King Koi va-nished without a trace;
His subjects most infur-i-a-ted by the sudden hasty leave
All that he had learned them fa-ded way with fright-ful ease
Except for wiser few who believed not what they please –
Not Laws of Life –
But Life of Laws –
His song their hearts do sing:

Kiddle-lie didd-lae diddl-a-dle
Fiddle-dee diddle-dum lie
Riddle-do diddle-dee giddle-mo rumpum
Shiddle tiddle jiddle foe-fie.

Brackish, Swordtail, Bichir, Sturgeon
Gourami, Pike, Discus, Bowfin,
Blenny, Gar, Snakehead, Bass:
Legions of fierce scaly soldiers
sparkling under the shine of the sun’s
misplaced affection, warded off by
the fluttering scalps of an army of immense semi-aquatic
trees, the species of which was lost along the canals of history.
The light was so filtered by their vermillion-striped
leaves that one could see its very beams, stretching for
the cool of the tree-logged water. And what rare water it
is, clear as the air itself and twice as sweet to the lungs of
man and fish alike. The fruit that grows above compares even
sweeter, with no peel to hinder its unabashed juicy flesh. They taste
like a winter’s day in the middle of this noonday heat, the tingly frizzing
of bubbles to the surface after each bite, so succulent –
But I will choose not to eat of these melons, which are ripe this time
of year, and not even in their best condition. When winter
arrives, they die, and then are empowered to paralyze the
very essence of consciousness with a salivating barrage
of tantalizing flavours.

But I, perched among
drapes of their fragrant, fragile buds, lay not a
single claw on the fruits, for they are not mine to savour
yet, but were planted here to relieve
the appetites of bedraggled wanderers on their way
to Yonder Side, though they protest and say
“We are on a journey! We are travelers!”
Where to? Where from? What for?
They never can answer.
“Who are you, who wander here –
Lost, alone, and incomplete?
Hark this tender, lulling sigh
Lilting lithely through my trees,
Bidding you seek out a form
Following swiftly behind
As it extends caring claw,
Helping you go on your way.”

For what seems weeklong, I
wait in my hunched roost for a reply to my
call, but only the ripples of fish
breaks silence’s shell. Across the canopy
I bound in search of life’s affirmation,
dislodging fruit into the mouths of the grateful
beneath, when a small paddling boat catches my
ever-watchful eye. Within, huddled in each
other’s arms, are the youth of male and female
sexes – not quite children, not quite adults –
engrossed beyond body in a transcendent intertwining,
as the roots of the trees around caress the earth
underwater, despite its unwholesome, marshy
consistency. Their countenances imitate peaceful content
and even traces of human love radiate
from them in corporeal hotness.

Their single being is so engrossed that they
do not notice me, a hulking shadow in the branches
ruffling its feathers to be noticed passively.
But they only notice the beauty they share,
and I am as transparent as the water supporting them –
the fish playing around them –
the fruit above, and the sun threatening
to burn it all with a cosmic passion –
It is all mute in their eyes, so I must speak to them
for all whom cannot speak for themselves.

“Who are you, enraptured youth, lost in my
forlorn forest, set apart from time and space,
when the sun is pelting the melting land
with her sensational exhalation?”

The young lovers offered no answer
but tightened their hold on what could be felt.

“Why do you shun me, wandering ones,
the Spirit of this forest? You may believe
that what you have is good, but it is nothing
compared with that which could be. Look –“
The female human roused in irritation –
A shoe bounced off my ragged coat
and disturbed the fishes. “Oh, shove off,
you old pesky bird! Can’t you see how
busy we are, before you interrupted?”

“Truth be told, I cannot see
what is being accomplished here.”

The male started, as if from a trance.

“Babe, do you know where we are?
Actually, could you remind me first
where we were before we became here?”

The seething girl peered around
but could not recognize enthralling beauty
or the forest for the trees
or the meaning of that phrase.

“If it is where you must go,
there is no doubt the Pasture is your
destination. I would be pleased if
your companionship along this route –“
Another shoe went whistling by,
wrenched from the foot of the male.
It seems I shall be ignored;
such is the lot of the realest truth.
“Just shut up and grab an oar –
we came through there, I’m pretty sure.”

But I could see the way the lie
further clouded sleep-dried eyes
as they paddled under trunks,
between the roots and through the golden
patches reflected along the water. But
they would bump and fail to sail along
in a straight course. I followed overhead,
distraught by their failures, unheeded when
their boat aimed for a nonchalant carp
and capsized. The fish floated up with the
lovers, slain by the forward pointed forwards
to nowhere. As one wet mass of resentment,
they tumbled back into the boat, breathing
heavily and spitting out perfectly clean water.

“What got in our way?”

The corpse of the koi, the most divine of
the entire grove, even when perished, rocked
gently against the starboard. Its scales are
iridescent, patterned like those of the fish in
the Pasture, though I know not how it came here,
and simply to meet a pitiful fate as this. Nothing
was considered by the lovers, whose stomachs
shook their limp frames upon the sight of its
heavenly meat, and they scrambled to heave its enormous
carcass into their tiny vessel. With
bared fangs and salivating maws
they dug into its skin and skewed
portions of rent life into
the burbling abyss of the throat.
I beseeched them from the branches:

“My dear lovers, do not lose
your senses! Try this fruit instead,
more delicious than any fish, and meant
for you –“ A shoe soared high.
Their eyes were wild, breaths rasped;
already the charming koi was but bone,
and their bodies soaked in each other’s blood
that widened the Wild in their eyes.

Hacking crude spears from the boat
with bare hands, they speared a gentle
arapaima. The female demanded larger portions,
but the male submitted her to a hardy blow
which she returned diminished. I could
stand no more, and fled the noonday sorrow
deeper into the forest, until their splashing
and hatred was no longer audible; My distraught
heightened as I leap past a voracious school of
conger eels, rows upon rows of hellish teeth,
starving for the misery and entrails of prey,
wriggling swiftly in the direction of the struggle.
I only wish they had desired the Pasture
as much as they had desired their illusion.

With farewell, so I greet
afternoon’s dry cooling with a tune
to soften love’s worst memories;
I return in turn from whence I came
until the next poor wandering name.

“Draw thee hither, young lovers,
As noonday sky flares red –
Under the shade in heat of day
And heat of bodied union lay,
Don’t you wish to find a grove?
Prevent thy hold from being clove
Will I, thy cloak, prioritize
Since time and darkness awfully flies
If devotion cannot dearly hover
Across the wood to Yonder Side.”