A withered leaf
drifting in loose circles
wanders aimless on the stream all day,
when a brisk current sets it on its way,
a rusty shard eddying on the silver stream.
It settles in a bank of silt and crumbles into mulch.
Leaves rain down as the trees dream,
branches inclined and intertwined, in narcotic sleep,
weaving shadows over the river deep.

A starving deer, skittish, by the water
leans in to lap its shifting shades,
trembling feet sinking in the muddy edge.
Sinew, like a whip, cuts across its flank
as it looks up, startled by a noise,
lifts its wet muzzle, then is stony still.
Beneath a jutting rib, the stinger lets the poison drip,
seep in. The wasp feeds on the kill.

A yellow mark
sets an animal apart in the wood's dark.
The gaudy stripes, the buzzing of its wings,
foretell the coming of the predator,
scattering the crowd of living things
until the wings are held by an invisible hand.
The wasp writhes free from the weightless strand,
then another jet from the spinneret
closes the net.

A dark silhouette obscured in the canopy,
a ponderous body on filigree legs,
is the widow in her web,
patient as she drowsily spins
her dreams of death out of delicate threads.
The tug of an incautious step in her snare
marks the end of her wait.
The patience, the languor, abate,
and swift, she glides down from her lair.

A translucent spider hunts its middling prey.
The Sun comes up and the light of day
dries its watery organs, 'till a fragile husk
crumbles in the wind at the fall of dusk.
Through the dark loam by its curled-up feet
breaks the thorny stem. Buds, dark green pods,
lift their heads, unravelling into petals of Night,
black roses, glistening with the evening dew,
the forest awash in the dark bloom,
as a murder of crows takes its flight.

Tree leaves chime with the falling of rain.
In the clearing by the Tree lightning cleaved,
the Maiden of the Summer Song
lifts Her voice in inciting refrain.
The wilderness stirred by the quickening Wyrd
takes up the melody, Nature whispers in thrall:
"Viravain."

Nothing else matters at all.