we followed the wild pig,
its hoofprints like small arrows
through dark moss and ferns,
to borrow its sharp-backed life
for a while
inside our own.
It pawed the wet ground
for milk-white potatoes
that filled themselves
beneath the ground.
In the dark forest it went,
where growing sticks
were sharp as the black,
wounded heart of brush,
where roads ended in fog,
where the first race of men
built walls of small, white stones
that have not fallen,
then vanished
into the dark center of things
that beats like a heart
unable to cry
back the old lives,
the uncertain lands and tongues.
We followed the tracks like arrows
into a cave
where the walls were wet and shining
but they did not come out
and no pig was there,
only cool emptiness.
We hoped it was not an angry ghost
or hungry
or lonely
but the damp black stones were shining
in there
and on the ceiling
were painted the green birds
that once lived
in the rain and the trees.
It was like the night
I woke beneath the river
and there was no way back to the forest
except to become a spring of clear water,
to fill myself
and make a new way
through the world.