By Taunja Thomson
On the hunt for a sylvan-tongued, curly-
horned, shaggy-shanked dancer/drinker/
prowler-in-the-woods, I step carefully
around bundles of blue-eyed grass (not
actually grass) & false indigo, hopes high.
I have been slinking/skulking/snaking
this forest for an hour, the afternoon sun
curbed by live oak’s woolly frame & by
river birch’s bowed legs—I am not yet
ripened by June’s solstice rays.
And now, hoofprints, cloven, the color
of acorns, ambling between bramble
& strawberries—wily bastard, I whisper,
lowering my brown hiking boots into
the impressions softened by folded grass.
He’s taking the same path I’ve been taking,
I murmur, following me—more devious
than I thought,& pretending to take the bait,
I continue following the prints, but casually,
arms behind my back, shoulders relaxed.
I bend to study chanterelle’s wavy yellow
& agaric’s red tilted roof, yet I hear nothing,
feel no shadow fall across my back, no spine
shivers, & twilight invades the woods with
its violet shadows & assured coolness.
Puzzled, I stand straight & still, watch
my shadow, hawthorn-jagged, whirling,
cavorting with trout lily & moss, crowned
by moon with crescents, crisp & coiling,
my footfall riven amid cinnamon ferns.
~inspired by Felix Vallotton’s “The Satyr in the Bois-de-Boulogne,” 1904
About the Author:
Taunja Thomson’s poems have appeared most recently in The Ekphrastic Review as finalists in its “Perfect Ten Marathon” contest, Sagebrush Review, & Beyond Words’ “Scars” anthology. She is a co-author of Frame and Mount the Sky (2017) & Delight Is a Field (2025) & author of Strum and Lull (2019), The Profusion (2019), & Plunge (2023).