I took a walk just after sunset

Like a skunk,

Through the stark stillness 

And breathed the musty leaves.

Their musk smells different after dark,

Like a man who's gone home from work

And put on better cologne to go out to the bar.

But the shadowy figures here are just trees,

Whose forbidden whispers are innocent,

Only the sound the breeze makes blowing through them.

And the only leering done

Is by the harmless rabbit,

Who leaps back into the thicket just beyond

Where the whirring purring hum of the crickets

Will lull him off to the safety of his sleep.

And I will walk as far as the willow,

Where no one laughs at me at night.

I'll hold its leafless, slender branches

Together like the fingers of your hand,

And think about the band of gold

You slipped around my heart before you had to go.

And then I'll turn and follow the smell of wood smoke

Back to the fire I left burning in my hearth at home,

And live to walk another day,

Another way, in the other world 

Of morning.

-jenn