Wooded Vales and Howling Winds

The wind is old in the wooded vales
its voice a rusted knife
it carves the air in fragile tones
where twilight sleeps with life

A shape has stirred; you see it not
but feel its ancient crawl
in breaths between the withered leaves
where shadows rise and fall

The trees are brittle silhouettes
they strain, they stoop, they stare
but it’s the wind, the wind alone  
that presses through the air

Or is it? For something darker hums
a lull beneath its cry
A hunch, a sense, a phantom brush  
of wings that scrape the sky

It watches—or do you imagine so?
It drifts, unseen yet known  
its shadow bends across the pines  
but vanishes like bone

It never speaks, and yet you hear  
the breath that shares your pace
a sound that doesn't quite belong  
within this hollow space

You walk, but tread where others fell
are these your prints in loam?  
Or has the harbinger long passed  
and called your steps its own?  

What stalks beneath the crescent moon  
whose claws you never see?  
What waits in vales where silence roams
are you its prey, or is it free?  

The pines, they sigh, but do not bend
as something waits below
A gaze too cold to ever blink
yet still, you'll never know