Moonlit Landscape

A gibbous moon glints
off the landscape
as I leave a trail of
giant steps on the plump
luxury of a storm

following the tracks of mice
over the flats
then trailing a rabbit,
zig-zagging down the slope
where tree shadows

ghost the snow,
moon silvering the
silhouetted branches.
A hawthorn grasps my scarf
and my snowshoe is caught

by a stump playing
nighttime tricks.
Did that shadow move?
And did I hear nocturnal
hunting sounds?

My passage through these woods
is more dreamlike than real
and the fleeting shadows
may be no more than my
thoughts flitting the

forest of primal memory.