THROWBACK THURSDAY
Image by Louise Dickinson-Brown
VIELFRAS
By Lewis Turco
He inhabits a precious pelt,
dogsize, but a hunger greater than he
inhabits him. He is the gorger
Vielfras, habitant of scrog
and underbrush. All creatures grand
and minuscule are his prey. Upon his
thick legs the long body moves, silent
as snow, until his bright teeth close
and rend. He will devour the roe,
the boar, the ox — anything greater than
himself, his sac of fur swelling till
it strains to split. Then, he will seek
two close-standing saplings and squeeze
between them, head first, disburdening his
swollen bowels of their freight. If he
is captured somehow — stunned, perhaps,
by blunt arrows so as not to
damage his variegated fur — when
he wakes in a pit, he will attack
mortar and stone, eat his way out,
and noggle awkwardly into
the winter air toward his trees. If he
is chased, the hunter behind will be
pelted with half-digested rock.
The flesh of Vielfras, they say,
tastes like hunger. It will grow in the paunch,
and he who wears a coat of its skin
may never remove it again.
From an unpublished manuscript, A Book of Beasts, poems by Lewis Turco, illustrations by Louise Dickinson-Brown; the poems may be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.
