Animagus Poem by Troy Cochran

Autumn is the sorceress in the sisterhood of seasons;
Up to some slow mischief; all secretive and scheming; all wind-stirred.
Her breezes coil and hiss about the skirts and skinny ankles of her trees
Whispering treason;
Her mists are druid; her woods are cauldron;
Her mysteries are animistic; fluid; merlin.
She is a silly bird
Who molts, but in her veins of sap a low fire brewing
Magic black and blind as bats, tobacco spat,
Is still chewing.
She's cast a spell on me, and still construing:
I find myself in the belly of my undoing.

If I, like mad Autumn, shake my mind and loosen leaves,
And feel the letting go and tossing off of old beliefs,
Some animus, some magician, startles from my sleeping;
Reaches through the windows of my mind to let in fresh new light
And fresh new knowing;
Confiscates my eyes out-throwing
Shapes of... Everything! So fiercely individual,
Yet vulnerable to my probing
And inviting.
And suddenly I am animal; I am visceral;
I am out-bounding everything.
I shift: become environmental.

I want to howl against the Moon of my unknowing,
Stretching muscle against the pain,
And keep on going.