4)
I moved into the woods
built a little cabin, below the rocks
and covered by the trees;
yet I had visitors
who had come astray into the wilderness

Someone wanting space for the night:
“Is there enough room in your cabin?”
“Why,” I said, “there’s plenty all round”
I was vegetarian
but the destitute offered themselves to me -
the religious might say: God fed me
even in the wilderness! Ha!

A wandering woman one evening,
she offered love in return
for shelter that night
She let me lick, taste her flesh
“Bite me,” she said
offering a foretaste in our foreplay
Why would they not leave me? –
these wanderers, the intruding world

No, I had not come in like Thoreau
or the Unabomber – but maybe
like the misanthrope Timon of Athens...
afraid of my own hate; but the innocent
seemed to be drawn in as to a...an...abattoir