What is it
Out there In the landscape, waters and sky we know
That after long-shadowed dusk
When darkness blankets the land
Becomes alien, unknown
What is it
Outside the circle of light
From our hearthfire
Out in the blackness
When the new moon doesn't show her face
And the stars are faint
What makes us bar the door
Should something brush against it
Close the shutters To save our minds the shock
Should something come out of the deep black
And stare at us through the pane
What makes us gather
At the heart of home
Away from cold outer walls
Faces toward the light
Our modest blaze
A homespun sun
For creatures of the day
In a house encircled
By pitch, unyielding shadow
What is it
That thin cry
Out there in the night
The snapping of twigs
A shuffling in the shadow fields
A creeping dread In what had been a sunny pasture
Only hours before
What is it
Out around us
In the impenetrable murk
That sea of the unknown
Winding round our little pool of light
So many unseen threats
We stitch together
We've always done so
When we are powerless
It is Composite things
We stitch together
The shadow folk, horned and hooved
The hags under the trees with eyes like cats
The ebon-boned long-fingered reavers
Dead-hearted, bloodless
Grasping out like thin bare trees
The owl man high in a tree
With rat in craw, ever watching
And more and more
Or perhaps it is evil men
Blade wielders,
stranglers
Faceless and bent to cold mayhem
Or the simple bare-fanged wolf
Unstoppable devourer
Etched in ancient memory
We stitch, we stitch
And keep them at bay with the circle we cast
From our hearthfire
As though light would melt them
And we stitch again
A luminous net electric Stretch it over the land
Visible from above the benighted world
Chasing out shadows Pulling them back like dark curtains
Bound in a gridwork imposed
But always black beyond
Surrounded by true dark
But we've forgotten
In harrowed aversion
To the true dark
A hallowed promise
From our remote beginning
Primordial
When night's black wings
A mother's touch
Feathers soft and warm
Shielded us, hid us, helped us
To rest or wander
And wonder
Amid wakeful things nocturnal
Rising with the moon
Silvered and blued
A living world
Under the blanket of shadow
As alive as we
In night's cradle
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