Seek out, children, the curious moss-mouth

clearings of the earth, deep within the withered bracken 

and writhing oaken roots. These are ancient

roads, little ones, that have been stalked by things

 

far more powerful than you –– the Horned God and 

his wild things still watch you run and play

from primeval corners of our wood.

 

Oh, but you are brave, I know, and will let

the slumbering earth-mother nourish your bones;

scraped hands and bruised knees seep like dew

 

into the hungry soil. The dryads will drink,

it is all the same to them.

 

“Come back inside!”

 

and let me mend your muddy clothes, 

darning holes in tiny socks and listening to

your patchwork, lilting stories of what is now memory––

 

baleful, verdant roads that groaned out their secrets

on the precipice of inescapable adolescence.

One day, I shall wither, sweet ones, and you must

 

bring my body back to the wild grove of oak and avalon,

where the lake shall meet the glass-strewn sea––

let me sink beneath the waves, and join

those wild, ancient things that hunt and roam, eternal 

 

till these paths we walk again.