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 told
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.
I threw myself backward to a boulder lichened a verdigris hue,
praying its stolid stance would at one with me become, halting a
fatal slip unto a land of black and gloom, one prepared just for me.
Trembling, useless hands grabbed behind me in futile effort to latch
onto the permanence of stone to earth held fast through eons of erosive
assaults, and one more: mine of grabbing and clawing and begging my God.
Soon did it seem the Devil's own maelstrom had no desire for my wretched soul;
this man's descent to the realm below stopped short while 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 happened to be on
scene when the cosmic sweep of heaven's mighty luminaries was wrought, channeling
Celestial vaults 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 for this little man.