I wonder
I wonder
Embers glow in the dying fire.
It blazed all night...
yellow, orange, red,
with sudden bursts of green
every time a fresh Juniper branch
toppled into the flame.
Now, the blaze spent,
the embers quiver,
radiant
in the dark before dawn,
cracks in their char-blackened skin
revealing their beating red hearts.
I wonder...
What stories do these
glowing hearts hold,
from a time long, long ago?
And how might it feel
as life slowly drains out,
to know you’re a steward of tales
that live only in you?
I wonder...
when the embers
finally turn to ash,
what happens
to those tales?
Where do they go?
Is there a ramshackle warehouse
out beyond the realm of time,
where an old bespectacled clerk,
bends over his notes,
filing away our stories
in his underground reliquary
where they slowly turn to dust?
Or, is there a sanctuary beyond time
a never-neverland,
where all stories live,
animated, forever young,
waiting to be called forth
with every exquisite nuance,
in the dream of the dreamer
or the song of the bard?