Linn of Quoich

While you sleep, and the sun
creeps between branches,
shooting inquiring glances
into the deep, aching pool below the ravine,
a woman walks into the wilderness.

As thrown wood circles,
rejected by the snow-cold flood,
your blood drifts uncertain in the heat,
your bare feet, unknowing, touch
the ashes of a long-dead fire.

Greyness leaves its mark, but the rock
carries no sign of a body. When you move,
it is to open a door
behind which a devil lurks:
you examine the door closely
and decide on something cheaper.

A woman walks into the wilderness:
you do not see her go.
I watch the flow of the stream past abandoned doors,
and the way the sun makes shapes in the water
that could be fish
and the way the wood circles
and the woman walks.

There is a pain in my gut: I may die
under this helicopter sky.
The woman who walks into the wilderness
smiles at me.
I do not see how things could be
much better.