So weary I was from a walk in the woods
that I lay to rest at the foot of an alder tree,
finding sweet repose on a cool nest of leaves.
The air, both fragrant and warm, lulled me gently
to a needed sleep (I welcomed it gladly) and said to
me that she would awaken me in a very short while.
To that blissful state of a flowing mind I succumbed and
awaited her promise that, in due course, the time should
come when I would arise refreshed, prepared to carry on.
Dreaming away that the air had turned chill,
I awoke with a start, black hail on my face and
my clothes all awash with an unheralded drench.
The sky had turned dark (for hours had I slept), but
for moon blurred by mist and stars draped by a shroud
that presaged to this man some great terror lay nearby.
In slow counter-motion, as viewed in deep southern climes,
the black water's center spun and swirled till, at length, once
placid liquid caved with deafening roar to an abyss near to Hell.
Threw myself backward to a boulder lichened a
verdigris hue, praying its stolid stance would at
one with me become, stopping a downward slip.
Trembling, useless hands grabbed behind me in a
futile effort to latch onto the permanence of stone
to earth held fast through eons of erosive assaults.
Soon did it seem that the Devil's own maelstrom had
no desire for my wretched soul: this man's descent to
the land below stopped short as the sky funneled down.
Topsy-turvy had my world become, a microcosm
compared to this shifting of heaven to earth, earth
to heaven that paraded past an irrelevant man who
Just happened to be on the scene when a cosmic sweep
of heaven's own luminaries was wrought, channeling the
celestial vault downward, downward into a lake unlike any
Other on the vast but limited expanse of an orb chosen, I would
guess, to serve as receptacle of an unfolding new world of bright
and glory: misty moon shines forth, enshrouded stars glow anew.
