By Martin Falatic
Written 1996-02-08
Revised 1996-02-08, 2010-08-04

To walk in the cold, dark green and olive-hued woods
To walk in the cold, misty air,
To breathe the cold.
The sun lost, only clouds remain,
But her scent drives him on.

So many smells,
        The musty wood
        The decay of flowers
        The pregnant humus
                From which one may have no doubt that spring will flower.
Only hers stands out.

She is like the woods: dark, foreboding
A study in quiet contemplation.
Her hair is the dark red sunlight as the sun sets in the western sky.
Lit with a fire, she stands out at once fragile and timeless.
She waits for the moon to rise, to pale in the unholy light.
She waits, never asking why she is alone, never knowing anything
        but the slow progress of the seasons.

He seeks her as one might a treasure, coaxed on
        by an indefinable scent of the unattained.
A scent I speak of, as alien as the smell of forged metal
        in dark days gone by.
A scent otherworldly, rooted in the past,
        queerly at once the melding of that and the future.
A scent of flowers pulled and pruned,
The essence of the forest and the meadow captured in her skin,
To become something altogether unique, signatory.

The winds change, he loses the scent.
Lost, he falls to his knees, broken, at the whim of the wind, the rain.

She sees this, in her mind's eye...
She waits, for she knows they will be one.