Where do poems come from? Well you see, when a man and a woman love each other very, very much . . .
When it comes to writing poetry, I usually begin with a single line or image, something that gets stuck in my brain and won’t leave. This poem began with the image of the great shaggy cloak. I thought to myself that sometimes I can wear my sadness like that.
I am often drawn to the myths. Writing that is personal has a way of bleeding out into something more universal (or is it the other way around?) and sometimes without really meaning to, I’ll find myself wandering up the steps of Olympus, or into the hall of some musty god. My last poem, getting eden, began as a meditation on death and, as I wrote, took on a new shape, dipping its toes into biblical waters. That was Genesis, this is more Ragnarok. The alpha and the omega, as it were. Fenrir, the monstrous wolf of Norse mythology, devours the sun and Odin along with it, and I liked how this image unfolded in my mind. This werewolf transformation breathing fire into something so cold and lifeless.
But enough rambling. Here’s the poem.
Fenrir ~ by erik kain
Wake up from the sinister black spider dream, heartsick, a terrible empty dull fever ache like vines in my chest thorns rooting about my lungs bones in my throat sleep in my eyes. The fire’s withered down to an emberous nest. I should leave the cabin put on my boots there is nothing but sorrow in the cupboards nothing but memory in the timber and smoke in my eyes. From the window, a panorama of space earth and sky entwined snake eating snake a vast plain huddled beneath a heaving hungry storm lightning drags its fingers across the chalkboard horizon scraping thunder from the dirt. I stop at the door, take up the walking stick, gather the great shaggy wolf cloak around my shoulders grey as stone and warm as pity wrap myself in willowbark and dogwood set out for the treeline Alone. I've walked this path before past the woodshed where the spiderwebs grow, someone has carved runes of woe into the gate. I remember leaving. ash in my teeth bound in fur and shadow and blood hoary and ancient smelling of sickness like wet dog and licorice. but this time the beast is still alive it whispers secret incantations in my ears old wolves’ tales that curl and billow like roiling black fog. I can feel its hot breath on my cheek and the ruinous sludge beneath my feet. Come now, old friend, lope beside me across the steppe toward the wild tangle of oak and briar and flame the sky is a black tinfoil carapace. In the distance, wolves howl under a fallow moon and we howl back crouched now on all fours we burst, bloodthirsty, through pasture and prairie. artificial stars blink and scatter like startled constellations as we pass. and somewhere in the night air on a high hill the old one-eyed man grins out from beneath his hood and waits for us there.
Thanks for reading.
love this well done
I love myths, also, and this struck a chord! I imagine my ancestors listened to tales of Odin and the Wolfskins on ancient nights beside their beacon of light, an eye in the midst of chaotic night.