A song from wilderness places calls me:
Bewitching both in sweetest tone & tune.
I would answer, but do not know the rune:
Yet my shivering blood yearns to be free.

Piping clamor of slender elfin reeds:
Voices risen in waves of witching praise.
Sounds which delirious senses amaze:
Wonder eager tutor one rashly heeds.

Warnings have I, from my mother & gram:
To pay no thought, & repeat the lord’s prayer.
Such musical marvels these Others share:
Songs drawn from Mab’s airy realm that may damn.

Prayer no atonement for my allure:
For my soon-to-be-sin there is no cure.
Soul forsaken to follow those notes pure:
Though even so, should I go? Am I sure?

Then rises flute’s drone, harbinger of Pan:
I off to drink myself drunk on moonlight’s dram,
Now lost forever from the haunts of Man.

[Scott J. Couturier is a Rhysling-nominated poet and prose writer of the weird, liminal, and darkly fantastic. His work has appeared in numerous venues, including The Audient Void, Spectral Realms, Tales from the Magician’s Skull, Space and Time Magazine, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and Weirdbook. His book of short stories The Box is available from Hybrid Sequence Media, while his collection of speculative poetry I Awaken in October: Poems of Folk Horror and Halloween is available from Jackanapes Press. He works as a copy and content editor for Mission Point Press, also co-editing the anthology series Weird Fiction Quarterly. Currently he lives an obscure reverie in the wilds of northern Michigan with his partner/live-in editor and two cats.]