The Old God Dies
Jennifer Crow
The old god of the forest
has died—a messenger spreads
the news, voice cracking.
Silent groves, leaves falling
out of season, stags with only
one antler to wield in battle,
the list goes on. Better the devil,
says the messenger, than an empty
room. We don’t understand,
not at first, with our walls holding
against the past and the future.
We don’t understand until
the ground cracks open beneath us
and vomits something horned
and hungry, inevitable as the sun.
Jennifer Crow’s work has appeared in numerous print and electronic venues over the past 25 years. She lives near a waterfall in western New York state, and the curious can catch up with her and learn more about her writing on Twitter, where she goes by @writerjencrow.