Black Spirits of Wormwood

Black feathers smell like wormwood and August heat. Rough pine trees bleeding with hot resin, digging in the sinuous veins of roots into the gray sand. Below, the jangling heather and grasshoppers raging in their song. In the serpentinite crowns of trees, the throat songs of the raven shamans flow like a mountain stream. Sharp needles of gnarled branches, like the claws of a witch in love, gently prick the cobalt sky belly. Soon all the greenery will perish in a flame of fiery red leaves, and then turn into cold ashes. But now, time stood still. You feel it? The Gods froze and wait for something.