Down many roads
Behind me
Over many hills
And weaving, wandering ways
Through shadows and through light
Of the distant dappled past
Filled with faint whispers of
Familiar sounds and smells
And faded, sun-bleached colors
In the echoing halls
Of the castle of my childhood
When the hinges of the wooden doors
Swing singing to a slam
And shake the walls with
Their tremendous thunder
And the steps outside grow distant
And all is still
And dark
And cold

…Among the chilly labyrinths of stairs and stone
And looming darkness, and the moving shadows…

There is a room.
Light leaps and laughs
Behind the lock,
Around the door,
And floating on the dark, the eerie air,
With dazzling bejeweled wings of silver,
…there shines a voice.

It flies, it trembles and
It sighs and soars.
It beckons to my stricken heart
To follow;
Stabbing my listless soul to life
It beats its wings against the bars
And flutters up, away, and through that door
Into the light.

With every note and every chord
With every song, the Voice’s flame burned deeper
Melting in waves of tremulous heat
My icy soul
And calling me to come
To hear, to listen, and to unlock
That door.

The room became my kingdom
In this prison
My fiery home of joy
Within those haunted halls
Where my heart could leap,
My eyes could weep,
My soul be shaken with the soaring songs;
The Voice summoned me deeper, darting, ringing
Echoing through all my blood and bone
Until it changed them.

And in the strength it gave me
I stumbled to the window in the wall;
I saw there were no iron bars at all,
But an endless starry sky of hopes and dreams
A great wide world just waiting to be seen.

Since then, my feet and heart
Have traveled far
Through crowds and cities,
Fields, dusty lanes,
Through scenes and sunsets,
Never two the same;
There is a scar: an ache, a vivid memory
Still tender to the touch
That tries to turn me
Backward, time and time again,
But I cannot go and open up the castle;
For time looms, frowning, standing in my way,
My childhood buried quietly
Beneath the bony fingers of the trees
That sway and whisper in the castle’s dark
And miles and miles of sad and sunny days
Have filled the place
Between.

But if my soul had form, and solid shape,
Or if my heart could beat exposed
To show the world what sparked it to its rhythm
You would find, burnt deeply
Into every fiber
The branded image
Of two silver wings—
The symbol of the trembling Voice that sang
(With truth and power enough to break a chain)--
My shackled soul
To an eternal
Freedom.