Hunter of hearts
You are the antidote
To the wolf in man
Never tame
You gentle our wildness
You help us turn packs
Into families.
Killer of fear
Cleanser of souls
You shear away
What is dead, or meant to die
You bring light from dark.
On the night your scary twin
Eats the moon,
You give us white fire.
On your bicycling legs
With your flawless compass
You take us into the shining heart
Of the Peacemaker.
Over the black rubble
Of our guilt and shame
You spread a clean mantle
Of fresh-fallen snow.
Your clear eyes read
What belongs to us and what does not.
You know better than we do
What it takes to be human.
This poem is in my collection Here, Everything Is Dreaming, published by Excelsior Editions.
4 comments:
I really love it, thank you Robert Moss.
Robert,
not only is this a beautiful poem, it is an important one.
We forgot how to access instinctual power, we confuse the electricity of violence with natural, healthy aggression. Wolfs and shamanism have appeared in the mainstream for exactly that reason.
If we can love our aggression, appreciate it for what it was meant to do, we don't have to be violent.
Alas, it has been beaten out of us, millenia of civilization have buried the instinct and now we must explore who we really are and become aware of self censorship induced by tribal necessity, meant to keep us safe and strong.
Violence and anger, they are emotional live wires and must be approached with extreme caution, respect and control.
This is not an invitation to be brutish and give in to bloodlusty rage, it is an invitation to reconnect with our true humanity, acknowledging the impulse to be violent and letting it pass on, as delicious as it might feel momentarily to lash out, instead the task is to learn how to dial the impulse down to the intensity appropriate to the situation.
To learn this we need tools, and this poem might just be the start!
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