He moved into the clearing and sat
surveying the kingdom
he had come to call his own,
A place shared uneasily with others,
a place of bounty nonetheless,
And though it offered
none of the pampered warmth
of inside realms,
it was his,
And the sun kindly threw stripes of gold
across it from time to time
And there was life teeming
in the shadows and the deep holes,
life enough to hold his interest,
life enough to sustain.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 2, 2014