Enchanted Landscape

A dream walk

I open my eyes to find myself slowly descending toward a wondrous forest.

Endless ancient trees growing in twisting paths with gnarly trunks of deep brown.

Their leaves coming in every possible shade of greenery.

There are small green meadows breaking up the perpetual trees.

I land in one of these meadows to discover all is not as it seemed from above.

Those trees have become dark and twisted.

The meadow about me seems cold and lonely.

I seem to be the only thing moving in this place.

Like the trees have smothered everything but themselves.

The greens have gained a grey cast and the trunks are scaly.

Yet it still has a strange elfin beauty about it.

Nothing moves, yet I feel like I have watchers.

I look all about and even up into those twisted branches.

But I can see nothing moving at all.

Just the old, hoary, weary feeling trees.

They seem to whisper among themselves of ancient times.

When people lived within this forest and it was friendlier.

Tales seem to pass through, half heard and even less understood.

Of hobgoblins, witches, warlocks, elves and fairies.

Then woodcutters came and great swatches of forest fell to their axes.

The wild ones fled first, vanishing deeper into the woods, then off this world.

The elves, fairies and gentler creatures were the first to disappear.

Then went the hobgoblins, were folk and tiny hidden ones.

The dwarves caves emptied next, as they found deeper caverns.

Lastly vanished the magic folks, for humans no longer believed in them.

Thus I stand in this emptied tree land where no moving creature lives.

Only sorrow, and the memories of what once was.

The trees down, the reavers left the forest.

The trees came back from the seeds that fell from the dying murdered trees.

But the wild folks never returned, they no longer exist in this world.

Sharon Pribble

Reviews

[Bard Constantine]

Forests have that feel to them, no doubt the muses of those who wrote the ancient tales of lore and legend. They carry time in their boughs, stories waiting to be told, wisdom waiting to be shared. Nice writing, Sharon...