Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “dream of the neolithic hunter” by Martin Jones, part of the League’s Fresh Voices program.

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dream of the neolithic hunter

By Martin Jones

imagine you are running with the hunt—

moving through deciduous

and star-shimmered canyons

under a fox moon,

becoming the wind

and the broad-leafed canopy

exhaling above,

the pebbled earth

and the wild churn of rivers

the mist-soaked air

and gnarled bark of ash and oak,

listening to the rhythm of footfalls

to the music of owls and nightjars,

the rustle of beasts in foliage,

pikes and blades gripped hard,

under the spell of a star-sprung

and haunted heaven,

becoming all that lives

in this leaf-lush and luminous blue world

and knowing as the goose, the nighthawk,

the wolf, the mammoth, the stag know—

yet, one is just waking to the small,

still hours of a summer night

in the land of separateness,

each thing in its closed and distant being,

redeemed only by the moon

and the music of crickets

and the presence of a lover who sleeps

beside you, quietly breathing.

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Copyright © Martin Jones

Martin Jones is a Scarborough-based writer and poet and the author of Arc of the Sun, a collection of poetry, and a book of short stories, The Gentleman Lion. He has had several poems published in literary magazines and websites, including Queen’s Quarterly, Juniper, Mental Radio, the LCP’s Poetry Pause, and the Dark Poets Club. He is a winner of the McIlquham Scholarship for Creative Writing at Queen’s University.

Fresh Voices is a publication and workshop program created by and for the League’s associate members, curated and edited by Erin Vance.

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