.
And her arms enfold me,
I lay my cheek
against her breast.
The shaking starts,
the tears fall,
as sobs emerge unhindered.
Cries from way down deep,
and I hear her heart,
slow, steady, metronomic.
So I follow its rhythm
along a path richly bathed
in warm sunlight.
Through an archway
and across a threshold shrine,
the cemetery of the Ancients.
A hundred thousand names,
carved in marble,
adorned with statues and plinths.
Holding knowledge of old,
and the sound of silence,
like an abandoned library.

The shadow of love hovers close,
driving through midnight mists
and leading me on.
Practising narrative necromancy,
reanimating old words,
giving them life newly born,
upon the first carved marbles,
its names burnished with wisdom,
and the anonymity of obscurity.
There glows one name
in forgotten script
and I know my deepest identity,
the weight of the aeons
flows free into my mind,
histories of the millennia.
I know
my Forest Lady holds secrets
that belong to me.
And she gestates them all,
a coveted pregnancy.

A path-working, an etherical dream,
and her heart skips a beat,
as another part of me
crumbles and dies,
to mingle with the dust
of ancient knowledge.



© Pagan Paul (11/07/18)