October 1 The Woods

By Cliff Lake

 

October 1

The Woods

 

There are old places.

Older than what surrounds them, yes.

Feral and willful places,

Untamed and untouched,

One does not attempt these woods under this moon.

One does not tempt these woods under this moon.

Here the veils are thinnest,

Here the crossings are not so difficult.

The entry opens rarely,

Seasonally,

And ever back through eons.

An entry that opens now…

It has come through.

 

It bides its time,

For the season returns once more.

A slow hunter,

A creature of consummate patience,

Inexorable.

And for some,

Inevitable.

One does not tempt these woods.

Not under this moon.

 

This is a mire.

This is a maze.

This is a mistake.

There is a collector here.

A gatherer,

An unrelenting connoisseur.

It can wait,

It has cycled many times,

And more times before that.

It can wait.

 

Many traps it baits,

It has learned much in its wheel,

It has forgotten not a trifle.

One will hear nought from it,

For it croons only to its catches,

And those will report not.

Indeed, the silence here is but one lure,

There are others:

Scents lurid and compelling,

Sights even more so,

And an ever-widening ease of passage,

Here in this dense timber,

A warning in impossibility that few have reckoned.

A warning too clever in its overt brazenness.

One should not attempt these woods under this moon.

 

Winter will find its way here soon,

Too stark and too bare to conceal the snares,

And too barren and too cold for the entity to survive,

For its home is beyond the season’s rift,

And it has but a short turn on this side,

On this ground,

In this scheme.

At the first bite of frost,

At the last twilight of this moontide,

It must retreat with what clutch it has,

And murmur its chill and sip,

Until the shroud thins once more,

And the hunt begin again.

One should not tempt these woods.

Not under this moon.

 

Cliff Lake 9/9/2025

Copyright © Clifford Lake 2025

Location: Wichita, KS, USA

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