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Issue # 5 September 2011
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Charles Rafferty


 

Pursuit

However wide the wilderness
the path is always narrow —
the singing of a single sparrow
warbles at its emptiness.

The way to her can never last.
Her bootprints blur in drifting snow
deep in the widest wilderness
on a path that's always narrow.

The moonless pines don't acquiesce
to let me pass like an arrow.
I lodge in bark. I draw the bow.
I shoot myself from loneliness —
across a widening wilderness
on a path that's always narrow.