30

Her waxy feathers are glazed with red blood,
As she’s struck down- with sleek efficiency,
Limp and lifeless… limitless she had seemed!
From her throat is pulled a ghostly whisper.

Yet more glorious than;
The breathless, frantic squawks,
The slow suffocation in darkness,
The bright-eyed, damp, sickly terror of temporal Hell

Ah, the savage gleam in those black vacuums,
Wolf’s wicked snarling mouth not so grotesque,
As man, who wears an indifferent smile?
Its bones are groaning, its hunger dragging.

Its weakness runs deep; it dashes and leaps-
Squanders fragile life,
Alack, over this cub no-one weeps,
But Human, hark at the glum trees!


© Florence Challender 2011

29

What spell is cast around these slumb'ring walls
That the swishing snip of thicket can't break?
The bravest hearts are skewered on its thorns.
None so fortuitous to reach its doors...
Centurion Autumn gathers dead leaves,
Brings not Spring's life-kiss or Winter's release.

And who has come to wake the maiden fair?
Punished by the prick of a sharp needle,
So like the lethal point of the rose stalk.
The deceptive faerie nature spared, whilst;
Rubbled bodies tangle in its brambles
And Aurora's lips grow ever colder--


© Florence Challender 2011

28

We crash onto the ground
And all is silent, except, the rustling of leaves,
The disquietude in my heart.
And all is sweet, except, the taste of tobacco
Mingling with the cooling air.
And all is calm, except, the teeming of pestilent thoughts
Of your salacious smile.
And all is bright, except, the rapid-darkening night
as our lips lock...




Then I awake.


© Florence Challender 2011