Keeper of the Beast

She lived inside a hut within the wood- a strange and lovely woman, nature’s child. They said she was a witch, but she was good, a friend to all the creatures of the wild. The solitary wolf she’d come across, though wounded, was a living work of art. He lay beneath the moon with coat of gloss and eyes that sadly shone; he stole her heart. He loved her; she admired his grace and might, and so she sorrowed when he howled with pain, for when the swollen moon glowed in the night, she had to keep him fettered with a chain. That true and feral beauty that she leashed - was strangely what first drew her to the beast. For the Paranormal Poetry Contest of Robert James Liguori