Spirit in Matter
This was the morning when I saw through their grey veils
The souls of the stones.
Suggestions of weathered faces
Peered from beneath hoods of moss and the detritus of fallen leaves.
One bore a beard of pale lichen,
Another sported a downy cockade of unfurling fern.
A slick quartz boulder revealed itself the group’s leader;
The others encircled it heeding a silent homily
Imparting the wisdom that accrues
To a being that has lodged for centuries in an earthen hollow.
Round about, the trees kept watch;
Drawn up erect, all cellular senses honed,
Their alert intelligence vibrating
With the hum of a tautly-stretched wire.
Regiments of bloodroot
Massed on a southward slope
With green mantles folded beneath snowy helms,
Awaiting the high-pitched blast
Of a fairy trumpet.
Meanwhile, a grateful pool slowly filled
As a replenishing brook rushed down its throaty channel.
To be here at such a time each year,
To be silent,
To perceive the world with unnamed senses;
This is my commitment.
- Submitted by Emily Pena Murphey
Enchantment
This is the part of the tale
When suffering silences lips.
A veil has congealed over eyes;
A clasping of hands is let slip,
Dissolved as brute vengeance is spent
And a flood-tide of hate sweeps the land;
The lovers’ near-union now rent,
Each finds a way best as he can.
For bewitchment turns him to a frog
And her now likewise to a toad,
Their sacred humanity lost
To ruts of low, disparate roads.
And yet something inward, remote,
A crystalline substance unchanged
Is drawn by the lodestar of hope
Beyond their baptism of pain.
Restored forms of woman and man
Will meet herding flocks in a glade;
And there lamentation’s sweet tone
Cast moonlight on faces in shade.
Each sees in the other’s his own,
Two hearts yield up grief at joy’s birth,
Rebound with a cord that was twined
Before the creation of earth.
- Submitted by Emily Pena Murphey
[Inspired by The Grimm Brothers, “The Nixie of the Pond” (#181)]
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