This poem is for all those who find this life a trial. Keep on keeping on, as someone once remarked.

 

Buried in the Sunlight

 

Eleanor played the pipes as a piper should,

flying light with grace and flair and swing,

with airs like a wind band in the deep greenwood:

dancing her careless heart towards an Appalachian spring.

All who knew her, all for whom her life seemed blessed,

beheld the bloom of her florescent success -

never guessing the heavy veils of a mind depressed,

compressed in pain, feeling nothing but her stress;

 

yet still assured, still strong, still eager and proud ...

but breaking. Eleanor fought for her peace and reason,

as clear in thought as her faithless friends allowed,

a girl in time, awaiting her own due season;

a leaven cold as a butcher's slab, afear'd

like bellowing cattle at the fieldgate. The trees

silent in their frosted cages as crises neared,

chilled like Eleanor's world of futile pleas.

 

Buried in the sunlight of too many rain-filled days,

she surrenders to her magus, high in his spirit-tower,

enlists his promise of spell and steel, his storied, priestly ways;

no magic this, but a turning from darkness towards light and power:

in contemplation Eleanor senses what she knows to be true,

that so much is within her hands, should she only want it so.

No perfect life is worth the living, none imperfect should one eschew,

so keep on playing the piper, Eleanor, and she'll keep on playing for you.

 

Chris Hubbard

Perth, 2018