Under A Werewolf Moon

The streets are white with the full moon's light,
And scooped out with a silver spoon;
The waves are dancing, and the wind is glancing
From the light of a werewolf moon.

Wild she goes by in the arms of the sky,
Tossed by the skittering cloud.
Her fury makes warm the arms of the storm;
She takes lightning-cloth for her shroud.

Her light rolls along the roads fabled in song,
And finds them empty, nervous, and waiting.
Her light's wild call releases the thrall,
Ferocious, madcap, and hating!

He now humans hunts, who was human once,
With jaws a-slaver with drool
For the taste of fresh bones; his paws crack the stones,
And shatter the ice by the pool.

Oddly human of face, but wolf in his grace,
And both wolf and human in mind-
As a wolf will turn mad when there's no prey to be had,
He hungers after his kind.

When an animal flees from the shadow of trees,
And madness blooms at the plenilune,
Then the night is fierce with shouts the soul pierce-
This is the night of the werewolf moon.

He is the nightmare who does not care
If he has been here before.
He will take the neighbor's child, or stranger's in the wild;
He is the wolf at the door.

He will stalk a house, quiet as a mouse,
And leap through the window to the bed.
In the crack of sharp glass, there may be a slight gasp.
Then he falls to eating the dead.

He may try the latch, and fumble with the catch,
And then into the rooms he will glide,
Moving soft as snow; the first one will know
Of danger is when one has died.

The soul of the most sane may the werewolf attain,
Or the madman complete and whole.
He comes from the pits, and on the heights fits; 
The werewolf comes from man's soul.

When the night is wild with the moans of the mild,
And terror plays its bright tune-
Then the night is aswarm with calls to change form,
In the sight of the werewolf moon.

The moon calls nightmare from what is already there.
She does not summon the wolf from one
Who thinks only of light, and prays all the night;
Werewolves cannot hunt in the sun.

But there is no man who in the moon can
Swear that his soul is completely clean.
He falls under the sway if darkness one day
Has made him smaller, and petty, and mean.

It only takes one gleam, one hint of dark daydream,
To give him to the moon's power.
And then it is the foul light at the window at night-
There will come his werewolf hour.

We dance with the loon under the werewolf moon
Because darkness also rules in heaven.
We are the killing dark because we have life's spark-
We are werewolves because we are human.

This night the dark fills with the sounds of the kills,
And all the world is a misty cocoon
Where the werewolves howl, and go on the prowl,
Under the might of the werewolf moon.