Running with Wolves in a Misty Forest Poem and recitation by Taher I Feel the World I feel the world as if I were standing in a fog-laden forest, hearing the growl of breathing— a pack of wolves from a snowy mountain range. Branches buried in mist have pierced the sky, and the black, naked bodies of trees, in their solemn grandeur, have turned the forest into a temple— unconquerable. The steam of my breath resembles a terrified man who runs, runs, and suddenly vanishes. I close my eyes so the pack of wolves, like drifting clouds of fog, may pass above my head toward an unknown place. I stand at the threshold of the sea, upon a rock that centuries ago was a mountain, which in the evenings would gaze at the passage of whale pods through the hollow of its arms. I— now— look upon my ancestors in the roars, the passages, the running; in the figures carved into stone slabs and cave walls. I think of a supernova at the moment of its birth, of a time when time itself had not yet learned to pulse. When this illusory, graduated circle, moving in rhythm with the heartbeat of a strange and sorrowful being, had not yet cleared the way for the passing of the wolves. We will return to when clouds had no time to consider their own identity, when they wandered between sky and earth— as mist, as mountains and springs, as rivers and seas, and along orbits within the cells of trees. We will return to caves and forests, to days without names, to times not imprisoned in measured cycles. To the beginning. To when death was born. To the first aperture that opened a passage for light, and watched the world. I feel the world in a thin, translucent skin that sensed the damp cold of fog-filled air. Now I stand in an unknown place in the south, on a deep elevation that once was a mountain, at the threshold of time, facing the sea. And within me, someone sings a sharveh— a lament whose words my ancestors have not yet carved into the walls of caves. "Taher" Artist Bio: Ali Taheri known as "Taher" 🌴 Poet, Photographer & Filmmaker I like to stand in the wind! Short films : "Loneliness is a garden with one tree" 2019 "The gods are thirsty" 2022 "Sixth day, late winter" 2023