The rumbling rage-call breaks a new day's yet unspoken dawn:
Willing knees to buckle and quake within its martial soundsbreadth,
Rolling fear in waves breaking fast upon time-troubled minds.
~
What is this power that grins darkness into being?
Plotting evil's intent: the overthrow of every order;
Bane of once-banished beast; disturbéd peace veiling.
~
"This now is my time, too long held in imprisoned bounds;
My skin yet shines as blackly, yellowed teeth as sharpest scimitars
Eating through Eden's agéd oaken fetters."
~
Laughter breaks the churl's Ill-spun spell, cast woodland wide
From fearless heart as hale in bright healthy flower
Blooming broadly: a smile across this morning's dark mockery.
~
The Woodmaster turns to face the dragon's doom-call
Taking well-sharpened axe in out-thrust arm bared,
He comes, as only He alone, to decree the blasted dragon's death.
~
"These are my weapons, cut and formed in forge and bench,
That by iron edge and blooded sweat turns sparks to enfire the forest floor,
Taking the war direct to the devil's den: that soaring, speaking snake."
~
The battle forms, adversaries each at each with long-spent bloody blows;
The axe is broken! - both head and handle, crashing life lifeless
In one final blow beheading both good and evil by eventime.
~
The Woodsman stands still, loss unvaunted, vitally spent,
Taking breath's space to breathe boldly warm hope upon
His woodland, far, wide, and out, and further out yet.
~
His call breaking the sullen silence of now peaceful death
Hard-won, as awestruck watchers eyed and eyeing, beneath him
And above: on branches, leaves and in yet-twilit-glittering light.
~
"Hear me, all earth: hunter and hunted, creeper and flier, burrower,
Stranger and den-maker, greatest and least:
Be most welcome here all fair life across this, My woody glade;
In peace, I must go now to rest and raise my honoured axe anew."
~