The Voice In The Wood

In summer I could hear the voice in the wood when the wood was alive with slithering confusion and life was a hot green blur as the creek ran rushes. In winter the murmurs of forgotten echoes call me to a childhood bridge, a bridge to dreaming. A final silent day before the spring when the voice commands an ultimate act of faith, I flirt with denial. But quite accidentally, the elocution of returning birds, the flat statement of green tongues. I have grown familiar with broken things, the despondent and the desperate and I have wandered in tangled mazes rich with mocking disappointment for the bogus gold of spring. And I have picked the rusted heap searching for a bit of color, listening for a rustling, an affirmation of life. I have felt the sharpened edge of unrequited aspiration and I have been amazed to see the throng mirrored in a shattered shard of looking glass. Here I sit, retired of hearing old truths reiterated from un-inquisitive oracles. Here I receive, unabashed and without bias, the tenable with the probable, the unuttered undeniable, the randomness of inspiration. Here I affirm the voice regardless of school, regardless of intention and beyond misconception. Here I assert un-banished survival. The voice babbled like a young creek in a hurry to grow with rivers. It spoke confused truths and non-confusing lies. It laid down hot and cold explaining creation in fairy tales. It was a kind voice, substantial in tone, reassured and reassuring. It was the voice of functional rule. It spoke only to point onward. Gray air of dawn pierced by a natal moon broken by the whispering wisdom of a child's question. Deep was the wood and deep its rhapsodies without danger. Beasts as large as houses roamed, silver mansions reigned and clear water flowed. Among the hills with holy names, beneath the eagle's beech, a secret lake, and filled with love, eluded me by day for only dreams could show the way. Those were the free times before the voice began to warn of the end of dreams, of the time the dreams are real. I fell to my knees and spoke with sacred forces making timid pleas for undisputed phrases or in their stead a peaceful place to lay my head. I was answered by a non-committal breeze. There with wonder did I walk and there with laughter did I seek and there with ignorance did hear all vindicated dreams and fear. The voice never ceased, it trickled and roared like the tide, it drew me farther in, it pushed me out to test the gold of spring. It demanded answers from speculation. It demanded choices from induction. It wet me down, it dried me out, it made me think, it made me doubt. Then rippled in the waters a human halo, a blessing essential as dew dawning a quiet pond. The voice proclaimed the consecration of a man. I believed the voice. I loved, I gave and got, I lost and was resigned. And the trial was a trial of existence, of hot and cold, of wet spring nights and dry winter days, was a trial of strength, of mind and muscle against life's tendency for torment. I played with dreams and the voice played with memory. And I played with thoughts like notions from rare books and I sailed my toy boat, pieced together chanciness in the storm. Then did the voice crack with age and a vision of the damned. Then did I see the cracked wisdom of the world and death. Then did the voice roar like a winter river beneath a lost bridge to nothingness. It washed me in the wisdom of despair. Death is worth life the voice rattled - it comes. Strive not for death, it comes and the voice of what was will cease to the gasping cries of a new age. Search not for death and the wood is a constant symphony.