that old devil moon • (halloween suite)

RENEWING THE ASHEN SCRIPTURES

You brush leaves from a stranger
sleeping beside your gate

and welcome him to your estate,
with its sunny fields and barns.

He admires your bins of wing nuts,
your fine linens and deep well.

You show off your net strung between trees
for capturing sunlight,
your ponds and goldfish.

In the storeroom, you offer him dates and grain,
purified water, buckwheat, and dry ginger.

Take what you need. Rest.
The stranger answers: Follow me.

I will show you where the trail begins
to the encampment of souls in the forest.

You follow him across muddy fields,
past the ox swishing its tail,
tethered to a tree,

past the pond where stocked fish peer through surface clouds.
At the forest edge, you push through brambles and ivy.

You stuff your ears with moss to mute the abacus of trees
and press through spindly pines into thick woods.

Everywhere God goads you
with green ignorance.
The souls of trees shout, Speak! Speak!

One of the moon's thirty names will save you.
You forget your hunger,
the Names of God,
the alef-beit.

Emily Warn

Shadow Architect
Copper Canyon Press
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