Year: 2023
‘The Wolf In Us’ by Mark Hastings – Chapter Four: “The Wedding of The Wolf and The Vampire King” 2
My Poem “The Embodiment of Poetry”
I walked into the woods today... I returned to a place that I know well and a place that knows me... I saw the same trees that I have known for over a decade, and as soon as I entered the place where the poet in me was born I saw echoes of myself from the past - and I felt as if, once again, I was seeing a version of myself who had yet to have suffered the scars and the losses that I had. I have always felt blessed with inspiration whenever I go back to where things began for me - the place that I have a memory of which is so clear and special, the place where I only remember feeling an abundance of happiness, the place that I consider a fountain of poetry, that I have been back to many times over the years; however, today, this time, from the moment that I reentered the oasis of life that over time has become the endless kaleidoscope of memories, experiences, and thoughts from the moment that I saw it, I felt as if I were returning truly changed and different from who I was when I first visited. I felt it almost immediately: I was not the same person as I was, and yet I was still the same poet who I have always been - but now filled with the things of mine taken from the shadows of the monuments that define my life... I felt like I was one of the trees, and I felt as if they were as close to me as family... I felt like I had been waiting for something which was always there - but, before today, I could not perceive what had always been all around me and right in front of me. I had been away from this place for a long time - but as soon as I was once again surrounded by the storytellers of nature itself, it did not take me long to complete the puzzle within me, by using the pieces I had left behind from the last time I was there, to realise that I am, and I have always been, what I always wanted to be: the embodiment of poetry.

‘The Wolf In Us’ by Mark Hastings – Chapter Four: “The Wedding of The Wolf and The Vampire King” 1
‘The Wolf In Us’ by Mark Hastings – Chapter Three: “Home Is Where The Wolf Is”
‘The Wolf In Us’ by Mark Hastings – Chapter Two: “Two Wolves”
‘The Wolf In Us’ by Mark Hastings – Chapter One: “The Wolf and The Raven”
‘The Wolf In Us’ by Mark Hastings – Prologue: “The Wolf In Us” – part 7
‘The Wolf In Us’ by Mark Hastings – Prologue: “The Wolf In Us” – part 6
My Poem “From Time to Time”
In white writing on black leather I saw the warning "Nothing lasts forever" - something I have known all my life, but recently more acutely than ever. I have never been blind to the fact that the universe is constantly sending us all messages and signs... I have never been oblivious to the fact that some things are created and some people are the way that they are for reasons that might not become clear for a considerable amount of time. Sometimes, people do not know why they chose to make the choices that they did at a particular moment... sometimes, people can see what is to come - both the good and the bad - and they decide to proceed anyway, because we all know that life is sometimes both scarier than a horror movie and sometimes ridiculous enough to make us laugh. From the day that we are born, the world changes around us... from the time that we are grown and we see, and we understand, that nothing and no one is meant to be eternal, we know that there will come a day when life will go to great lengths in order to teach us all a lesson about what matters when everything is said and done... we all have to live the life that was always meant for us. From what I have seen, and from what I have learned, I would say to anyone who still has no idea what they are supposed to do when it comes to making a decision - whether seemingly insignificant, or one that is life-changing - never forget that we are allowed to make mistakes, and perhaps repeat the same mistakes over and again. Why? Because whether we want to believe it, or not, each and every one of us is a mystery - sometimes even to ourselves - and sometimes the slow discovery of who we are can make us all feel better about the most random things in life that we have accumulated, remembered, and sometimes we pick out from our individual internal memory tombola that we revist from time to time.
