I saw before me hordes of players of an ancient game,
The rules of which I could not fathom, no one knew its name,
Or how it came to be or where or when the game will end,
Nor who is deemed an enemy or who’s indeed a friend.
A gilded girl approached me with a smile upon her face,
Reminding me of somebody whose name I could not place,
She spoke with velvet voice that almost toppled into song,
“I know you know that this is not the place where you belong.”
I felt I’d been unshackled when she took me by the hand,
Then with a static crackle we were standing on the sand,
Her foam-white horses galloped, tossed across a sea of red,
And crashed upon the rocks where only she would ever tread.
Two sisters stood beside me, side by side in sisterhood,
Two brothers at my other side stood strong as brothers should,
The snow that settled soft around us froze about our feet,
And as we stared up to the sun we felt its humbling heat.
I saw myself ascending, sent on scented summer’s breeze
Above a frosted forest of soft oscillating trees,
I flew, I knew not how, nor when or where I would arrive,
The blue, it drew me through with all the care it could contrive.
I saw quite soon the sun and moon advance amongst the stars,
And Saturn dance with Jupiter and Venus dance with Mars,
And as they raced through space they traced a path through boundless time,
For which there is no reason, but there’s riches in the rhyme.
The five Platonic solids circled just beyond my reach,
In their iconic certitude I saw what they could teach,
Restoring the infinities of numbers on the plane,
Ignoring the divinities mindnumbingly mundane.
“It may be a surprise,” she said, “all I’ve revealed to you,”
“Now opened are your eyes,” she said “you’ve seen what’s real and true,
So throw away your zodiacs and holy books and dice
You know that you need no distractions, no divine advice.”
We sat in silence in the swirling sinew-biting mist,
And for a while the spiral dial of time ceased to exist,
Then with a motion of her hand she beckoned by the shore,
In from the ocean to the land her foam-white horses four.
“I’ll leave you now,” she whispered, “I have nothing more to say,
I know that you now know this game and know that you must play,”
She turned, and as she left to touch her hair I did not dare,
Her footprints in the sand the only sign that she’d been there.
I saw before me hordes of players of the ancient game,
The rules of which I’d fathom, and to which I’d give a name,
The game will go on just the same but time it is no friend,
The part I play today, just like this rhyme of mine, will end.
© 2020 Glen Scott