Women I’ve failed or wronged or left behind
approach my thoughts like zombies for the kill;
I’ve literary walled defences — still,
given the chance, they’ll eat my brains, my mind.
Through forest, orchard, farmyard in decay,
a shadow of a wolf slips greyly in,
my thoughts of death, grim, wasted, ill, rib-thin,
tracking my weak resolve, hungry to slay.
Mountaintops blown apart, forests clear-cut,
where’s there to hide? Nature doesn’t exist;
her landscapes crushed in patriarchal fist.
This former farmland hides my ruined hut.
Impotent, I still write, thus giving birth
to future wolves and zombies of the earth.
