There the eagle, that thief, is a righteous savage, a noble fiend. (Outside the glade are shadow and prey, are ice and naked death. For in this timeless, taintless space, the Wild has ceased to be.
Here rabbit and fawn may linger, no longer need they flee. Here the field mouse draws no shadow, the eagle seeks no prey they spend their while caressed by rays, and halcyon days are they. And there, forking, its bent and broken arms embrace a strange, enchanted glade.Īnd in this glade the black bears sleep, though salmon leap fat between falls. It wanders and it wends it brakes and all but ends outside a clearing wet with sun. There is a wood, an island locked in ice. It works its jagged way downhill, round ragged rifts and drifts until it comes upon a little frosted wood. There is a gorge, its walls shattered by cold a once-green thing that, in dying, birthed a thousand aching fissures. Its blue tongue’s tip just tastes a frozen gorge.
