Oaken Espers

A poem about fairies and the nature of existence.

Born out of star stuff and childish lullaby,

A synergy of stray synapses and understanding sought from the unknown,

She was dreamt up through foreign means

With transparent wings and adorned with Earth-toned clothing.

Deathly afraid of a glimpse of the hovering darkness

She toiled in the proceedings smaller than herself.

She peeled away the layers of green and spotted tans�"

Dreaming upon the pulpit while being dreamt of herself�"

And her dreamer being dreamt up as well.

Atoms or gods, it’s simply a matter of perspective,

A moth to a flame, a sunken ship to an ocean floor that pierces it,

A broken branch sunken by the wind,

A distant quill from below, but the human mechanism at work

Gives birth to oaken espers, ghosts in the flora.

Castaways in a universe too large to even remember creating them,

Remnants of the supernovas before, reminders of the start of the mortal coil,

Descending through time,

We are the blinded through scope of sight, strangers with every passing layer.

Derelicts in a cycle of dreams, expanding infinitely with every thought,

As we abandoned creative thoughts and imagination disappears through age and decay,

We maroon our own dreams to their own worlds and let them dream up their own.

 

Cities or heavens, it’s simply a matter of perception,

A spire to an orbit, a tree rooted to the far flung planet that sustains it,

A human being cowered in momento mori,

A simple organism from afar, but the mathematical mechanism at work

Gives birth to oaken espers, sheltered fauna in the flora.

 

She, among the children of a mindset astray

And carelessly giving color to a world of order,

Tries to fold the leaves around her into a world

She can fully see, fully touch and conceive.

We, among the children of some workings

We cannot fully grasp through science or religions,

Try to fold the universe through

Precision telescopes, holy text and quantum physics.

When these fail we apply chaos to the darkness,

To the mundane begging for fully realized creations,

So on this wind-swept day beneath a tree with errant rattles of forlorn branches

We conceived of oaken espers inhabiting the curvatures of sloping leaves.

A demon-haunted world, a demon-haunted world,

Ghosts in the flora and sprites upon the tips of the foliage.

Resting here upon the pulpit, upon the stem, between the pedals, within the flower, tied round the thick branch, hanging from the tree, within the forest, within the valley, upon the land, upon the planet, within the solar system, within the galaxy, within the darkness of the universe, among infinite universes, within, within, within a dream in a vast sea of dreams.