Civilization's Lee

A singular maiden of prancing stride
skipped to her pattering heartbeat,
trapped in a step out of time-
so, lightly wrapped in illusions
of long fugitive nights,
she fled the creeping blackness
through the towering grays
strung out like teeth in the jaws
of her wilderness, tracked
by preying stalkers that chased her
with dots of liquid sky
from bed to bed, fleeing
the white oriental taints
of their porcine filth.
She danced unseemingly,
fleeing to a real habitat
through the docile rush
of urbane safety in numbers,
the plodding stampede
along the sober maze of law
of unquestioning beasts
that cut her patch of sky.
She'd always lived with such expense
shackled in these vapid strictures,
she couldn't see as free
her days of wild nurture;
her dreams battered themselves numb
in the dungeons of her soul,
in civilization's lee.

By Jason Paul Fox