The playground of lights
Down in the dark wood stood the old man of the forest;
the ancient yew tree, whose boughs were as thick
as the silt that sits in pits in rocks in streams.
His bark was bottle coloured trousers
of the felted short-stemmed moss,
where lichens grow on carbonate salt
that seeps from limestone bust and broken,
where the old man’s roots grow into its fault lines.
Dashing and darting lights like fireflies
flitter giggling from branch to branch.
Seeing there was no one there but me,
the old man spoke:
“You see them? The lights? They are not flies.
They flitter and fluster. I leave them be.
These are the flowers of the forest.
These are the lives that never were.
They flutter burning through the wood.
These are the dead – the children at play.”
gurning through the flappings of tiny things
that flap past his ancient face, he continued:
“There are the lights of those cut short
those that lived the saddest and shortest lives.
In death, they play in a better world,
safe in the deep dark wood.”
Listening as best I could in the silence of the small dark grotesque grotto
that played hostess to their innocent play,
I heard them say:
And we can watch the nymphs as they swim and play
in the trickling brooks
as the sunlight glimmers on a warm summers day
as the ferns sway gently by the calm cool stream.
And we can set fire to stuff, and everything
and SMASH EVERYTHING
SMASH EVERYTHING, people.
And... breathe...
okay,
Smash it up some more.
And, breathe.
And...
the ancient yew tree, whose boughs were as thick
as the silt that sits in pits in rocks in streams.
His bark was bottle coloured trousers
of the felted short-stemmed moss,
where lichens grow on carbonate salt
that seeps from limestone bust and broken,
where the old man’s roots grow into its fault lines.
Dashing and darting lights like fireflies
flitter giggling from branch to branch.
Seeing there was no one there but me,
the old man spoke:
“You see them? The lights? They are not flies.
They flitter and fluster. I leave them be.
These are the flowers of the forest.
These are the lives that never were.
They flutter burning through the wood.
These are the dead – the children at play.”
gurning through the flappings of tiny things
that flap past his ancient face, he continued:
“There are the lights of those cut short
those that lived the saddest and shortest lives.
In death, they play in a better world,
safe in the deep dark wood.”
Listening as best I could in the silence of the small dark grotesque grotto
that played hostess to their innocent play,
I heard them say:
And we can watch the nymphs as they swim and play
in the trickling brooks
as the sunlight glimmers on a warm summers day
as the ferns sway gently by the calm cool stream.
And we can set fire to stuff, and everything
and SMASH EVERYTHING
SMASH EVERYTHING, people.
And... breathe...
okay,
Smash it up some more.
And, breathe.
And...
... relax.
Now,
how did that make you feel?
Now,
how did that make you feel?
Cynthia Buell Thomas
Tue 21st Feb 2012 12:36
I must get back to this, Dermot. See you tomorrow.