That Moment / Dark Familiars by Sarah Das Gupta

That Moment

Twilight creeps over the distant hills;
in the growing gloom three crows
perch on a ruined oak.
Its bare branches hang
like dislocated limbs.
Only the distant barking of a fox
challenges the menacing silence.

In the forest depths the half-light
flows among the straggly thickets,
where the hare passes
from this world to that other world
of spirits and the dead.
Wraiths of mist swirl round
the trunks of tall pines
whose topmost branches,
like severed heads,
are marooned in shadows.
This is that moment
waiting, waiting...




Dark Familiars

Old hags fly through history.
On the back of their brooms
the inevitable black cats.
Nine times witches change magically,
into sinuous feline form.

In mothy blackness,
cats’ eyes burn topaz,
blood-stained ruby.
Familiars whisper
secret chants.
Black rites lie
hidden in darkness.

Freyja, goddess of Death,
drives her chariot
over winter skies.
Her cats strain
in their harness.
They plunge and spring
through storm clouds.

By a fire of bright orange and amber,
with her hellish third nipple,
a witch is suckling her cat.
As light thickens and night falls,
the covens gather.
They fly over bleak moors
and freezing fens.
Satanic chanting echoes from caves,
magic dancing in moonlit rings.
Old women in lonely places
Cats, enigmatic night creatures
secret, silent familiars.
Predators, furtive, seeing the invisible,
they ambush their prey.

The split pupils, the glowing eyes,
the sudden hiss.
Feline serpents, memories of
Paradise lost.
Witches and cats both sad victims
The cruel flames torture and burn!
Familiars in life and in death.

Sarah Das Gupta is a teacher from near Cambridge, UK who has taught in India, Tanzania and UK. her writing has been published in ten countries and many magazines including;'Paddler', 'American Poetry Review', 'Green Ink', 'Cosmic Daffodil','Waywords', 'Humana Obscura', 'Flora Fiction', 'Hooghly Review', 'Tangience' and 'Dipity' among others.