For Relevance

[perzephone]

Do you remember, brother
Those days in the wood
When you ran with the deer
Falling bloody on my doorstep at dusk
Stepping from the skin
Grateful to be a man

And do you know, brother
Just how I longed
To wrap myself in the golden hide
Smelling of musk
Blackberries & rain

Tell me that tale
Give me that choice
And I’ll choose speed & horn & hoof
Give me that choice
All you cruel, clever faeries
And I’ll choose the wood
Not the prince
Terri Windling, Brother & Sister

I, too, would choose the wood. Part of what gives me chills whenever I read that poem is that line about blackberries and rain.

In the North country
Beneath a Winter moon
A small grey stag with a silver hoof
Speaks with a red-brown cat

In the North country
In a darkened hut
A hunter watches over
An orphan child
And the red-brown cat
Who is all that the child has left of her home.
She has changed his evenings.

He used to return to an empty hut
To eat, sleep,
Then rise again at dawn.
Now he returns to a child laughing
It is still a wonder to him.

Now he feeds wood to the stove,
Eats the simple meals
She’s so eagerly prepared,
And tells her of the five-point buck
He has never seen
And will never hunt.

Sixty Winters he’s followed the herds.
He knows every ridge, every trail, every tree.
He never comes home without a deer,
He finds them even in blinding snow.
She cannot understand
Why he has never glimpsed
The one they call Silvershod
- Ellen Steiber, Silvershod