Does the great oak stand silent beside a glade of verdant solitude, still and vigilant, recalling in her solemn boughs a merriment long stilled? Has dwelt here children of sojourners among woodland and meadow creatures at play in swathes of damp clover mindless of care and interested in but gaiety, frolicking through dusky haze as fireflies are wont, yet mindless of gathering darkness, of impending arrival of sightless, senseless creatures brought forth from bitter times and dungeons of riot?
Under those oaken boughs and purchased with song of promise, yet unfulfilled and in great need a host of burdened and humble yet proud villages gaze from their dwellings in misplaced admiration of a nation long regarded to revel in prosperity, yet that hope of plenty dwells no longer upon this glade. Songbirds long taken to wing perch today here but in memory, woodland creatures indeed ceased wandering these environs and nurturing their young to thrive in forests of Provident abundance. A brooding stillness lies unperturbed over noisome fens long polluted by consummate and malevolent greed burning this forest, yet still the distant beggar desires his name, a mailbox here to grace, though it stand forlorn on some sad avenue of depredation where brambles and vines consume all.
From soiled places afar her light, once deemed with glorious with blazing allure, beckoned visitors, sang of virtue and pleasantries to delight the heart, has come feeble, no more than the flicker of a candle struggling for life in an incessant whirlwind of malice. The memorial lady, once who stood bravely with torch held high though long having ceased to burn, sadly gazes over ocean paths no longer plied by ships brimming with expectant hordes of strangers of strange tongues anxious to plow in new fields. Her feet now decay in mire as she feebly tries to warn away the few hopeful travelers who would seek refuge in her bosom.
Her cities, once proud and vibrant testaments to her abundance, are diminished, become dark and malodorous canyons where grotesquely deformed and mindless denizens awkwardly grope at unseen objects – objects only present in caverns which ever reveal infinite strangeness which only those destitute eyes perceive. They wander eternally through their own forests of calamity, seeking nothing, pondering nothing. High above, in sunlit arcades of the forest canopy, dwell lesser creatures, those who harvested the timber and created this bleakness, those who suppose themselves to be guardians.
As a dark wind approaches with the storm that will wash clean this sick, demented forest of empire, by now completely bereft of safe harbor to any, we bid farewell condolence to efforts of greater men who first sowed in her woodland. If trees are to become verdant, however, and boughs once again shall dance upon innocent summer breezes, those who love her memory – her inhabitants – must replant.
MK