Again aroused from beMused sleep by another challenge set in dVerse’s Poets’ Hostelry.

Yesterday Linda Lee Lyberg introduced Poetics: Songs of Unreason and introduced me to the work of James (Jim) Harrison ( 1937-2016). Thankyou Linda!

The challenge was to include one of her selections of his lines as an epigram to a new poem of any form.

Here’s today’s offering, remembering again the wild goats that I sometimes encounter on the A839 road between Loch Fleet and Pittentrail, in the shelter of “their” craggy outcrop, which may or may not contain schist (but it rhymed chimingly, so I hope it does).

feral II

“There is a human wildness held beneath the skin.”- Arts, Jim Harrison

oh yes, there's a human wildness and it's held beneath the skin
a savage quite ignoble—endodermis keeps it in—
ferality that tramples, Goat-hooves ringing on the schist
in the echoes of a Wolf-decree, a shrouded bigamist

No! there is a human wildness, oh beneath the skin held tight
with longing— to release it; to let the Miscreant out;
to let the Ogre lumber, the Ugly stumble free—
to call to the Beloved: welcome, welcome home to me


© Kathy Labrum McVittie 26 January 2022 All rights reserved