Doomed

Friend, if you go out in the woods
this night, you can expect a big surprise.
For this will not be the benign Nursery
Tale woods of child's delight.  The
nocturnal woods are a predator's playground.
The eyes you may encounter reflecting the
moon's silvery sheen are those of raptor
and relentless hunter sniffing the
panicked fear of their prey. This is not
the diurnal woods where songbirds
praise the miracle of creation and
small, adorable furred creatures leap
and frolic in leafy bowers.  This is a 
dark and eerie landscape of shadowy
figures hidden by dark, complicit night,
where victims cower and are in due time
pitilessly devoured, not spared the agony
of the wait in a suspended animation
of unalloyed terror, instinct informing
through their inchoate fear that dark
infinity will soon replace the bright
insouciance of tomorrow's dawn.  Friend,
this is no Teddy Bear's picnic, this
bleak imperative of primal need.