Violets. The sweet perfume of dusk. A trail folds around secrets, the mists around me. Wilderness, pure and fierce, living and watching, A footpath stitching through it Walled in grape and wild rose. The white eyes of a hazel gleam in the twilight, Blink, and are gone, veiled behind leaves. The soft mutter of an owl speaks an echo to my soul. The road forked in two, and a trail lay between them. Not for me, the straight road, nor for me the soft one. I took the third path, the one marked in mushrooms, Guarded by ash and watched over by rowan, Hidden from the gaze of the sky. The brambles feel comforting, their thorns on my skin; The melancholy taste of the berries here linger Like the glimpse of an ivory stag. Wisps of light dance to a half-heard ensemble, The music of the wild lands, of half-light, of dream. I am surrounded by the beauty of a Garden gone riot. I lost my own path; I found it in twilight. The owl has been answered, the rock split asunder. --A (98)