Cicadas sing,
chirping serenity,
gently chiding my plight as my legs whisk
in ethereal sweeps over vast fields.
I am as a forest fire; swift and
light.

My fare skin is subject to
a spectral glow; garbed only
in the spattered porcelain of a sun-nixed sky;
toes caked
with gobs of dew-laden grass.

Breath billows
in the raw night air.
Hair spills ad labitum in tendrils
down my back;
Caressed by the wind, it laps at my skin
with each step, licking like a canine's tongue
at the nape of my neck.

I clasp a wine-glass
steady between both hands,
red liquid vying
to cling to the outcropped cup
as a fetus to the womb;
not a drop succumbing to my gait, even as
I am startled to a halt.

The mounting din from the cicadas
announces their presence.

I watch them watching me,
shiver stalking the vertebra of my spine.
Intense gazes study critically;
prowling silhouettes from abroad oceans of grass,
vagabonds from the treeline beyond,
thence astray.

Wolves with serrated daggers,
knights with fur armor,
inching forward abrasively,
slavering their savagery, whilst of them
I wonder solely at him,
for he is intangible, invisible,
a breath of forest pine prickling
at my nose;
deflective to the hilt.

With a vicarious ripple of reality
he growls from behind me, the moments meld to
unsettling.

Swayed forth in a dance of limbs,
he leads me
to a melody of malcontent;
therefrom the wine puddles at my feet in the tumult,
whereupon I expect them to flee.

Still I am watching them watching me;
watch them abandon subtlety,
intent in their eyes smoldering; stray flames devouring.
Hear their howls waft through the land.
Hear their howls;
howls sanguine inasmuch they've bade their time.

It is he who sprints forth,
unbalancing me.
Gaze level to his paws, his teeth dip to tear
the wine glass from my fingers,
which now grope for the air
of a latent breath
until
he sheds from the field,
the pack trailing in apprehension not of he
but of the pilfered trinket.

I never saw him;
I heard him
as if he were a subtle breeze,
heard only though the clanking
from cadaverous limbs of frost-bitten trees;
felt him
as if he were the arbitrary itch beneath my skin;
skin newly tainted by a gilded raiment of whine,
water and earth.

wondering
at the widowed sky lifting her veil,
introspect dawns;
I surrendered
primarily at will;
so I would,

so I will.