Can you hear the wildness calling?
By Lee-Anne Ford
Never wild, never tamed,
Yet always mild, good girl framed.
Not a different drum, but a different snare—
Ever caught on music in the air.
Masking deep, assimilation high,
I learned rules yet questioned why.
An inner voice, an outer game,
A quiet fight to seem the same.
Never wild, never tamed,
No wilful child, yet never claimed.
Flights of fancy, bound yet free,
Imagination’s quiet mutiny.
Music—classics learned, jazz yearned,
Yet syncopation must be earned.
Appearing tame, but never so,
I learned to keep my profile low.
The liminal whispered, yet knew not its name,
Still, I heard it call, just the same.
Other voices—cars, dogs, chooks—
But most of all, the voice of books.
Never wild, never tamed,
Yet books betrayed what I became.
Stories, facts, and theories spun,
A mind unleashed, a race begun.
Books as rebellion, a dangerous spark,
Seeding revolts within the dark.
Still, the liminal called to me to see,
No matter what befell me.
The Mabinogi, ovid, bard and druid,
Saw life and essence shifting, fluid.
Visions flickered in the flame,
Noble wild, yet lesser tamed.
Wildness flares in quiet surprise,
Unseen, unheard—until it cries.
Into the west, the border-place,
Glimmering light, a liminal trace.
Don’t box us in, don’t tie us down,
Seek the refuge, break the bounds.
Let us flare—high, medium, low—
We have such wild places to go.
The Auld Skald's Fudgel 