The Remains of the Hunter

The muse is with me today, so here is a fresh new poem on the fly, copyright to me, owner of this blog at Loveandtheplanet.

Deeply within the vessel out of the light
the surface of the liquid faintly shimmers.
The Hunter alone is stalking his prey,
Foot-weary from tracking mile upon mile
Through Copses, glades and hilly scrub.
Hunting since the birth of dawn in the eye of his mind
So many taken, so many meals won.
The death of dusk never feared for the well-deserved dreams
The day just one more after yet one other.
Alone the Hunter grasps his bow,
looks to the sky as a flush of spirit flows
Upward,
While on the path his foot too close to the edge
Slips and the rocks slide underneath
And too slowly he glances
downward
to see but he is already tumbling down the cliff
The rocks with him and landing at the bottom,
shocked yet knowing that he is injured.
He cannot move.

The vapours rise out of the vessel into the light
escaping into the obscure mist enveloping.
The Hunter lies there and closes his eyes while night
Passes over. In its darkest hours pangs of consciousness
stab at his dreams but already the new day has come.
He cannot rise but crawls to a bush with berries.
Chewing these he lies another day until he spies
what may be a hole in the hill.
The pulling of his arms despite the dragging of his legs
takes him into what is not quite a cave,
And he waits.

While he waits the world does not
so days pass and then are gone forever.
The flies land as the carrion birds find him.
The maggots and the rot take the rest
So soon the Hunter's bones have their final rest.

No more hunters ever came to be,
and the Farmers never had cause to go near the cave,
Remaining like the liquid in the vessel
that escaped into the air,
The remains of the Hunter are bones
that might as well not be there.