Wind Walkers

                        Wind Walkers You should not have come here alone at this time of night, just dusk with the rustles of things unknown going skittering through your thoughts. Your own footsteps in the rotting leaves and needles multiply, taunt you to glance back with held breath.   Alone, alone in the western woods the wild trees in a riot of anger lash at the sky with gnarled evergreen claws, the wind infuriated. You’ll never fall asleep.   And if you try, the long scream of a distant evening train will cut through your dreams like sharpened steel.   Alone with malicious shadows that hover just above your waking the wind will mark you lean down and stroke your cheek with withered hands.

Erin Poettcker spends most of her creative energy as principal of a little private school on the UBC campus. Whatever’s leftover comes out in periodic binge writing, usually poetry, but sometimes bad short stories to entertain her students.