Dreaming of White Willows

Immortal. The word spoken passed through on a slight breeze, a wind to splinter trees. A flaming light, in the distance a bird in solemn flight. Soaring over, down below, drove into the depths as the White Willow sheds its last leaves. As green as the first morning of Spring, yet now rots in slow sleep to become once more: One. Immortal, gasps the widow of wisps-- the pale Madame of the White Willow. Crying out, wishing to take to the boundless dark above. Gleaming gemstones, a necklace wrought in the cosmos: one of which the loveless lover desired. Above all else: wanting love and loving to want, these malignant forces of an antithetical nature reflected what she found deep within her. And her silks turned to rags. And her hair turned to brittle strands, ones of which the Autumn winds howl into submission. Immortal, her lips pursed around a dying fire, stoking the flames with the last of Spring’s Dream-- the faded fragments of a once blinding green, now set in flame. Now resting in ash. Darkness: Eternity. Her reels and gears make their final rounds, while the sculptor perishes. The garnishing has turned to rust beneath the bright pools, yet they are ever-glowing beyond the bounds of what we believe to be our lives. The pendant, once the mortar of what she had lost, though now the supernova of what she could no longer deny. Immortal, she smiles as she climbs ever higher into the canopies of the White Willow. Higher, higher, closer to Nirvana-- a place of kingdoms constructed of star-light, of moon, and of the dark more immense and deep than any God could ever comprehend. Let the dusk descend, for it is always the darkest before the most radiant of dawns. And as her eyes close, the undying pondering a leisurely slumber, the Willows wail once more: Immortal. She wakens with a fright. Immortal, she calls out softly, until nestling again in the shade of a white tree-- it’s branches heaven-bound and it’s leaves more green than the vividest dream of Spring.