I near the beginnings of the Forest as sunset beckons; this, after my arduous two-day trek across a lifeless plain.
A Wasteland seemingly of both body and soul.
The green coniferous tree line stands guardian-like, and I smell water. So does my horse who I call “H.O.R.S.E.” (pronounced “horse”). He’s the one leading me to water.
I dismount in cavalry fashion.
I pause. A moment transpires.
The air smells fresh with pine. Pregnant water drops cling to the needles before the tension breaks, and the droplets careen down to the forest floor. A heavy rain from earlier. From out on the plain, I saw the dark water-laden clouds over the Forest at midday.
“Come on.” I tug H.O.R.S.E.’s reins.
We enter the dark of the Forest.
Dusk closes around us. A brusk wind sweeps through the branches of those lofty pines, which tower into the misty wisps of clouds that cling to the tops of the trees as if enchanted and held hostage. The trees sing in response. The air still has Winter’s cold. The fire must be made. By me. Now.
We happen upon a nondescript glade where the conifers yield. A glade resplendent with spring flora, a botanist’s dream.
Like her dream.
I drop H.O.R.S.E.’s reins, and he wonders off. I step through the wet grass to the bank of a babbling brook flowing in a steep ravine.
It was a time long ago and a place faraway from here on the wide flat bank of a slow-moving nondescript river somewhere lost in the Hills.
“You have an unusual ontology,” she told me as she sipped white wine from a long-stemmed glass. The bottle and its contents were still frigid from the plunge deep into that nondescript river.
We luxuriated side-by-side on a blanket we’d hastily thrown over the grass on that early summer day, and as we sat, her face was in shadow from her wide-brimmed straw hat. Next to her, I felt the warmth from the overhead sun as the Orb played hide-and-go-seek amoungst the white popcorn clouds.
I was beguiled.
“No one has mentioned this,” I said. “But you.”
Her red lips formed a smile. “Well, you are the most magniloquent man I’ve known.”
I grunt a single laugh.
She pushed up the brim of her straw hat. Her eyes were the green of greens on that day. “But,” she started, “you’re no Philosopher.”
A frown from me.
She widened her smile. “Don’t be sad. Don’t pout. I will read you some of my poetry.”
She extracted a thin book from her satchel and paged through the pencil-marked pages until she found the poem.
“Now listen carefully.
‘your distant shores call me to
Desire, like flowing honey,
an interlude
whilst our Passion burns
on Love’s Pyre
when, in the bitter smoky ash of our collective ruin,
Over-breaks the Dawn, Love’s ruminants’.”
H.O.R.S.E. bumps me on my back with his nose. I come back to the conifer forest, to the glade, leaving the memory of her by the side of the river, her body warm and sweet smelling.
The hint of her poetry is still with me. I look one last time at the open thin book that has her handwritten scrawl.
I close the book and put it back in my jacket pocket.
I leave. Her poetry.
I am no longer young and hurtle towards entropy, my bones old with the grind of age.
A bird of prey calls from the forest deep and, as I fan a small fire, I look up at the sky, now indigo, as the sun is all but set on the horizon.
It’s now cold.
And night falls.
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