The Hunt

“We are hunters of meaning in a forest of symbols.”

— after Charles Baudelaire

I. The Call

It begins with a single breath—

a silver thread tightening in the dark,

the faint hum of something ancient

resting beneath fallen leaves

and sleeping moss.

Life—before language emerged.

Life—before the world exhaled.

Life—before I became.

A shimmering bowstring

drawn across expanding ribs,

patient for release,

a simple sigh.

I draw back the string,

but the arrow never flies.

The tension is my offering.

A vibration—

half prayer, half instinct—

rises in the hush before dawn,

where even the wind

holds its breath to feel

the disturbance of a bow released

upon the world’s first hunted.

II. The Chase

Every step in pursuit

snags on memory.

Branches drag across my sleeves

like hands refusing to let go.

The path glows faintly—

a filament of want,

bioluminescent,

vanishing when I look too hard.

I wade through the undergrowth

of old stories—

the ones where love was a wound,

where beauty burned itself to be seen.

I hear wings,

or maybe myths breathing,

or the slow turning of a sacred page.

My bone-weary heart

thrums against its cage.

The hunter emerges.

Desire becomes its own compass,

spinning toward everything lost—

through our urban jungles,

our suburban streets,

our glittering data farms—

an unbroken return

to our primordial ways.

III. The Return

By the time I reach the clearing,

the light has changed.

The field is empty—

only threads of smoke

where the shape once stood.

I kneel, still trembling,

hands open to air and ash.

The scent of pine sap and salt

clings to my wrists.

What I sought

has already become

what I am becoming.

Already, it dissolves.

In disappearing,

I am remade—

the seeker and the sought

folding into the same dusk,

a single filament of breath

disappearing into light.

Author’s Note:

A spiritual hunt through memory and meaning, “The Hunt” explores the tension between desire and fulfillment, the beauty of pursuit, and the transformation that comes from never quite catching what we seek.