When the great ones return
Carrying magic in their wings
Then only the white teeth
Of the concrete kings
Will glimmer
In the pool of death.
Nothing else will sleep
On the stone,
No one slain,
But only
The echo of lies,
The din of malice,
Shed and gone,
When the green waves rise,
Bearing the emerald throne,
The majesty of the deep
Will deliver
Those long forgotten
Hooves of the innocent
To ride
Again on the mountain height,
Spirits of the living tide,
The throat of the lion of wisdom
Will rumble anew,
The rain
Of Indra will crash from
The chariot of thunder,
When
The forests reawaken to reclaim the earth,
Nothing will be lost then,
Only the masks of terror,
Only the mirrors of untruth,
When wolves dance on the hillside,
And tigers growl
In the blue
Dark,
With bright eyes that burn
Along the holy way
Of the night,
When spirits return
In the white magic of winter,
Triumphant,
On the howl
Of the winds of joy, the songs of sunrise,
In the victory of the horses of fire and snow
That break
Unstoppable, across the broad plain.
A storm to leave in its wake
Only the stillness
Of the lily of eternity
Waving in the sunlit rain,
For the truly living do not die, they say,
But only the walking, dissonant
Dead,
Only the soulless
Patterns of dismay.
Only the clouds ashen,
When the cosmic, winged mother
Gathers the wanderlings,
The flocks
Of garbled geese
And their errant goslings,
Among the trees of twisted juniper
And the radiant
Rocks,
Bundling all her children,
Into her many-storied home of peace
By the green-banked river
In the haunting bells of dawn.
© Sharon St Joan, 2017
Photo: © Elisa Bistocchi / Dreamstime