If I should leave now would you follow?
Leaving this hill to the plain winds and rain to weather down in torrents
The memory of me and a thousand other me’s?
If I should abandon this place to vermin and leave to those who serve me my home.
These places of sanctuary and respite from your haunts hold no replacement
For the barren blanket I provide for my reclusive comfort.
Where will you find the remoteness of warmth wearing widows’ weeds?
In the rock of the sky your conscience lays heavy as an ocean
On its impervious bed of certainty leaving the night ferocious, removed, remote.
The secluded pupil dilated as the moon of Revelation.

What is it you think you can do with me? You don’t own me
Like you think you own the pinewood. You cannot fell me.
I drink at your footprint, when your footprint is dry…I will be gone.

There will be no ponderous mammoth in the ice
Only a barrenness to unburden the feral wasteland of fervid seclusion
That was yours is now mine… as I go.

A new moon in the emptiness of heaven newly emptied,
Expressionless, muted and gagged in a forest where no shadow moves.
In rocks there will be no allusion to my form… when I am gone.

All your nights will be bitten by the eremitic cold of the moon
Alone looking for the mountains soul never to find the once wide pupil
Or whisker trimming the lichen…for I am not here.

When curled at the embers hearth of winter dusk I sleep.
Will you take my dreams and live them?
Take my dreams and return them to our keeper
Who will safe-guard them…
Now I am gone.