I love writing six word tales. They have a intimate compression that ‘leaks’ drama and mystery, adding resonance to a simple idea so that the idea becomes wider and suggestive. Like poetry, the words each have to connect in immediate yet sometimes unexpected ways.
It’s painting in short strokes, so that the intimate juxtaposition between each stroke/word conjures up an effect. Even the single word ‘wolf’ has an intense resonance. It is brimming with associations…
Years ago I read Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago and saw the film. The scene where a lonely Zhivago writes freezing in a snowy waste, surrounded by the magisterial gathering of wolves, has magical hypnotic power.
Zhivago has to write because he loves Lara passionately and time is not on his side.
He creates because he is at the very edge of creation, bounded by the ambivalent intimacy of wolves!!!
The wolves wait, predators capable of bloody savagery, yet also respectful of all the world seeming to be in exile, to be retreating from human connection, as the Russian revolution widened its geographical dominance and powers.
Wolves are loyal, courageous and exceptionally beautiful creatures whose eyes have the power to mesmerize When Zhivago looks out across the frozen wastes he is looking at another manifestation of himself, of his steadfast, enduring, yet savage passion.
I reread these yesterday and was reminded of two of my favourite texts on this site. Dylan Thomas’ poem ‘Do not go gentle…’ about his dying father and David Almond’s graphic novel The Savage. Winterson has also admitted she is a savage at heart in her best novel, The Passion and I know Emily Bronte in both her poetry and Wuthering Heights gave unsettling expression to the savagery that lurks beneath our veneer of civilisation and manners.
Love and loss makes all of us savage at times.
So these tales are just a collection of glimpses of the wolf outside and within. Check for fur!
Wolf Tales
Your eyes,
more wilderness,
than prayer.
Stand greyheartedly
alone enough
to dare.
That unholy winter’s night became you…
Your gaze
raw enough
to burn.
Their ridged darkness promised passion, blood…
Only you
And my undivided
attention…
Our lost places,
uncover souls’ propinquity…
Love it!
One of my favourite things that you’ve written!
Mark
Totally agree with Mark…
Haunting!