You guys do like the dark stuff judging by the reaction to Beloved Succubus. The Hitching Stone in this poem is on Clowling Moor which borders Withins Moor aka Wuthering Heights in Bronte's fiction. The setting suits both the story and this poem.

The Hitching Stone

You took me high, where wind bites
and even summer sun cannot paint
sere grass with the colours of life.
You took me to the forsaken place where
a sentinel guards the meeting of the leys;
there you took me in blood and hunger,
fed on me, nourished yourself, became whole
as we writhed, love-crazy, in the shadow
of the monolith. You took all I could give
but wanted more; to hold, possess; to keep.
It was your goddess who ruled the place,
how could you oppose her, you who once said
she sent me. I had done my work, healed you.
It was time to go. Our love was always of
the transient kind. You would not
loose hold and so she tore me from you.

I was released; sent away to pay other debts.
She is kind to me now, your Goddess,
Now I have paid the price for hubris.
I was brought down but now she lifts me
once more. But you, who challenged her?
She turned away from you and now
only the withered fingers of age caress,
cold as frost, where my touch once burned.
The wind that hunts around the
Hitching Stone, carries echoes of your
keening cries back to the place where
you tried to cheat the goddess
and sacrificed your sacred heart.

Copyright © Ian Thorpe, 2002

(The lady in the poem, a white witch she claimed, and also a writer, said she took me to the Hitching Stone, a kind of mini Uluru or Ayres Rock on the Pennine Moors, for the specific purpose of using my energy to work magic. I'm a high energy person apparently. She later said I had cured her arthritic spine - but I thought we were just having a good time.