Acupuncture By Charlotte Reed - Get a Free Blog

just beyond the trees, never thinking themselves
the children of heroes or gods. Th ey taught
each other to talk, but never asked
why their mother never could.
Th e boys lived.
Th ey tumbled around the forest as their limbs
grew and in time they found they would prefer
to walk upright, their backs straight and their jaws
set. Th ey played human war and never knew the diff erence.
As all children do, they left their mother one day.
Th ey found a human city and the nameless, matted
she-wolf died above ground. She had no concept
of an aft erlife, only a warm beam of unseasonable
sun that buoyed her away from the only earth
she’d ever known. Her children, twice motherless,
became shepherds, discovered themselves heirs,
royalty, and learned how human men play war.
When he awoke to fi nd his brother missing,
taken into the hands of rival shepherds
he should never have been so cocky with,
the slimmer and the scrawnier tore off into the dawn,
shouting for his taller, handsomer brother,
and when his head had stopped pounding
he gathered every sympathetic man he saw
and charged to Amulius. He could never remember
magus ~ 54 ~ mabus