Season of the Wolf
It’s time. The time you feared would come. Time as a wolf gnawed lean by hunger has stalked your lame and wounded deer through the ragged forest for years. It’s time for that relentless pursuit to end. It’s time to turn and face desperation’s yellowed and rheumy eye. It’s time. Death is close.
Something bilious festers in the stomach’s pit. Alkaline anxiety. Acid anger. A volatile reaction stirs the alchemy of fear. The chemical ambiguity of fight or flight. We are instinctively readied. But for what? Our ultimate em-pyrrhic-al victory over nature? A war lost by being won.
Limits expose the edge. No rubbery bounce-back from these extremes, only a leaden-heavy crashing on through. A wick-tailed bear fleeing the forest inferno with arse aflame. Flailing. And with each lunge of frenzied urgency, another fire licks up from the arid tinder. Someone forgot to rake the world again.
The earth’s diffuse grief, an all-penetrating fog of despair creeps coldly unwelcomed into the soul. Wrapping it’s smoky tendrils around the blood-flushed, straining heart. Fatigued compassion’s danse macabre a weary step on brittled bones.
Minds raddled. Junked. Blistering with our own hot, poisoned genius. Solipsism’s suicidal snare tightens mercilessly at our throats. Alcohol blunts like blade on stone, blinds like the sun. Detached and disorientated. Gin-trapped. Sobriety’s keen sight drowned as surely as mariners lost to the ocean’s roar. Drunk on spirits distilled from tart grains of delusion. We are as flawed and badly drawn Gods. Our disconnected arrogance, a termite complex of towering superiority, glowers over all life. Blackened thunderhead threat. We are the storm and the storm has come.
Squeak optimism from tattered lungs. A delicate bird-call lost in the bludgeoning winds. Lashes of rain whip tears to mingle with the weeping sky. Humanity’s warm kindness burnt to ashes under persistent rays. Hope’s false flag is lost, but another banner raised.
Courage fronts up to ravenous wolves. Faces them down. The gut shouts ‘fight!’. We’ve been running too long. Grief bleeds into love to balm and salve the aching heart. Whisky’s peaty wisdom a Spartan libation for the fire.
In the wolf’s eyes images swirl as ships in the maelstrom. Mad Kings decrowned. Fake idols shattered. Spectral loneliness exorcised. Consciousness re-entangled back into the wild and the cosmos. An interstellar mycelia that hums from every star-forged atom in your body to the Universal edge of everything.
It’s time. The time you hoped would come. Time as a well-fed wolf pack has just spotted your vital and sprightly deer in the thronging forest. It’s time for the joyous race to begin. It’s time to put on bravery’s bright and challenging eye. It’s time. Life is close.
Ed Gillespie is the author of ‘Only Planet’
