An owl swivels in her carriage of primordial haunts.
In her padlocked church of trees.
She knocks against night-forest scars,
blithely written in frost and the weight of oak, her sorrowful gagged companion.
Claustrophobic caresses of furtive tree voices stroke
the few unseeing guests who tentatively venture and retreat,
in their torchlight.
A wandering man falls from his unlistening life into a scratched lap of thorns, laughing beyond his dark.
Fading into a blank page of hunger, he trespasses across dense woodland, past its muted constituents, who congregate
in his presumptuous everywhere.
Evading humble patient rabbit holes, he carries the intangible
abyss bowl of night in his arms, beyond his comprehension, beyond his dormant dark.