The image I chose for today’s poem is a painting of the Brazilian folk character, the Curupira, a wild protective spirit that sometimes hitches a ride on the back of a wild pig. You can read all of the poems and see the images that inspired them on Paul Brookes’ blog.

Every forest needs its Curupira

Your hair
deer-fox-squirrel-red
sun-fired in a glade
a vision-flash
caught in the tail of the eye

you pass
stopping the noise of the guns
with your trailing footsteps
prey but what and where?

Dogs sniff
question the air
the wild scent almost familiar
but not quite.

You trace your backwards path
in and out shooing deer and hare
before you
confounding and confusing

and sometimes in the half-shadow
when the sun turns a blind eye
your fearful wild magic
turns a man into a pig

makes him run squealing
into the line of…