nevermore

an eagle … snake clutched in talons flew across the sun and cast its shadow beachward like a dark arrow … loosened I watched it soar and disappear into the fingery brume of the high fells as a cold breath of autumn slapped my face, seeping bones … as a heartsick lad, I had strode these shores a thousand times and a thousand more in dreams hence but never with such a burden as now … the world’s weight, my yoke - fitting that it should turn upon this very spot, where I’d lived and loved and languished the foamy lace to a savage, beautied brine … as the sun dipped the reach, cherry red a crimson moon arose, opposing their two bloody eyes grave witness to the end of man and the redemption of Zion … but redemption begs sacrifice and precious, this altar so many millennia of progress and brilliance and turmoil we lambs of sentience and greed - the very epitome of what any such wondrous orb should spin for and yet we had lost all to the enemy of least conscience … ourselves. but it was that defeat that defined us that proved our worth for we silly, stupid, passionate fronds of flesh are the envy of gods they, in all their majesty and omnipotence, can never know the true value of existence or the sweetness of a breath or the sentiment borne by a tear or the tenderness of the cheek it stains … they’ll never look at the moon and feel its pull on the tide of their coursings they’ll never fear the beauty of darkness or the naked truth of day it is only mortality that gives everything it’s worth and consequence - only oblivion that gives life incomparable value … so, as twilight falls about me, let it also fall on mankind let me be the final attestor to man’s earthly dominion … let these hallowed shores be stilled … capture the wave-top coins of moonlight and place them on my eyes for the Boatman … let my pyre be the warming light to summon the morn and let my ashes soar to the heavens to grace the powerful, sacred, indifferent wings of … an eagle. Copyright © October 9, 2024 Gregory Richard Barden