It is not a forest, more a sun-
dappled woodland near the Pont du Gard,
the river fol-de-rolling merrily.
Here, where they’ve been told the wild things are,
a family, a mother and her young,
step through wild garlic till they come upon
a small ménage of wild boars, sangliers:
a mother and her young, a glade away.
Their shadows lengthened by the dappling sun,
each gives way to the other and trots on.

*****

David Callin writes: “There are no deep secrets about the poem. It’s a memory from a family holiday in 2006, and my wife’s description of the experience of this strange meeting on her return from it. It struck me strongly at the time, but I must have stored it away, because I didn’t try to turn it into a poem until nearly 20 years later. Then, as a non-metrical poem, it didn’t take, but I found it again when looking for inspiration for George’s excellent short poems Snakeskin (issue 339, May 2026). It seemed to blossom in its new form.

“This is unlike the bulk of my poems, most of which – but by no means all – arise out of the life, history and folklore of the Isle of Man, where I’ve lived all my life apart from a brief period in the 1980s when I made a bolt for freedom, first to London and then to the Netherlands. But the place has a way of reeling you back in.

“My first full book of poems, From the Nab, is essentially Manx in subject matter. There is a review of it in Light (whose editor, I see, also features in your blog). This is the link to that … https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/book-reviews-summer-25/

“If any of your readers should like a copy – and who wouldn’t, based on that review? – a simple email to me, with their postal address, would do the trick:  dcallin2bvc@gmail.com

“Other than that, I pop up in Snakeskin from time to time – as often as I can, really. And occasionally in other places.”

*****

The image features a wild boar (Sus scrofa) with its piglets, commonly known as humbugs due to their striped appearance.