Losing the skills of venery

He who was skilled in the
Ways of the beast
All his waking hours
Readily pieced
together
The ways of each wild forest
Soul
Who in Winter came forth
In his unreserved role
A hunter a venerer
Keeper of game
Conscious of life
And more of the same
Instinctive to have that sixth sense
And to be
A spontaneous fellow
Clear-headed and free

Such was this man
As wild as the wind
With insights beyond
And wholly destined
To perceive and believe
And to feel and be real
Intuitively speaking
So able to deal
With every reaction
A mindset perhaps
Real concentration
Where pondering traps
The meditative desire
The quantitative need
Absorbed in daydreaming
In a way to succeed

Out in the forest of Windsor
In Winter
Frost decked the branches
Hoar burned the throat
Out with the hounds
With one’s King
A true master
Ready with bow
And arrow to float
The great park
Reserved for his private hunting
Wild deer and wild boar
All proven to be
Prized for their wildness
Instinctive and fluent
All seeing all thinking
And wonderfully free

And there in the shadows
A beast of such magnitude
A huge stag it’s antlers
Bowed proud and bold
The King sent an arrow
Deep into its marrow
Such was the affray
That before him I rolled
Such agony took me
To places beyond where
I had ever been to
The cold crazy fear
And dying was visited
By an Auric force field
Overwhelmed by the spirit
Abundantly clear

He was a keeper a spirit
A reaper
Of souls all desiring
The skills I possessed
I was to give him
The powers I had mastered
Every aspect of venery
That had impressed
For my king I was willing
To explore and discover
The great ragged horns
Would be mine and maybe
Filled with what was
Emotional baggage
Perhaps wishful thinking
Lay ahead of me
Naked and lost
All my true powers diminished
Hearn the great hunter
Really no more
To an oak I did tremble
And try to assemble
A noose far from loose
Certain death to explore

Suicide after saving
A spell from a raving
Undermining the power
Such naïveté
The horns thus adorning
My darkly awning
The chains around my neck
Would forever be
A face clad in greenery
Great antlers ragged
Rattling chains
As my spirit evolved
Once more a hunter
A hunter of spirits
The great Windsor Park
A mystery solved

Many a writer of folklore
And culture
Would pen sheaths of prose
To describe what they knew
Herne was the Hunter
The keeper the venerer
He had the acumen
And he was true
To himself the great hunter
Of hunters the true beasts
Who take on the wild ones
Who murder and maim
He had identified
Their true obtuseness
Their denseness their oafishness
And thus his game

To frighten to manifest
And be a deterrent
Turn against, put off
Damp the ardour and try
Unmatched and unequalled
Champion caring
True coexistence
Under the sky
Apologetic the penance of ages
A spectral wild hunt
As a bad omen might
Be seen by the vanquished
The darkly of hunters
Perhaps disembodied
And Wraithlike at night

Inspired by my friend in The Netherlands

Jan