*
Crossing Willow Creek
Parts 1-4
Parts 5-8
Parts 9-12
Part Thirteen: Going Nowhere
Though once a hub condensed and packed
With people far and wide,
Behold the city’s pavements cracked,
Each one, from side to side.
Her loyal subjects slaved and shopped,
Where commerce slowed but never stopped,
Where prophets and saints were slain in the land,
Like Brother Abel by Cain’s sinful hand.
Looking in vain for a brook where the crane,
Raven, heron and owl lay low,
These offspring of Cain are clouds without rain,
Blown and carried by winds to and fro.
They’re waves of the sea that no one can tame,
Raging and foaming unnatural shame,
Wandering stars for whom is reserved
The blackness of the darkness they serve.
They’re late autumn trees, barren of fruit,
Commoving over a desert of despair,
Dead and groundless, pulled up by the root,
In a pinch, inch by inch, going nowhere.
*
Part Fourteen: Throughout the Land of Nod
Will they ever find a home,
A stable place to lay their head,
Or will they always have to roam
And more or less beg for bread?
Underneath the starry dome,
Will they someday make their own bed,
Or will they always have to roam
And fight death till they are dead?
Will they always bear the curse
Of their distant ancestor Cain?
Will their lot keep getting worse,
Until nothing of them remains?
How long will they have to traverse
This most treacherous of terrains,
As wretches who suffer the curse
Of their distant ancestor Cain?
*
Part Fifteen: Running Themselves to Death
They don’t want to remain on the brink
Or spend all their days buying time
But long for aught higher than instinct,
Some end both profound and sublime.
They try to placate, although in vain,
The ghosts that haunt their minds;
They try to scrub and blot out the stain
And break the chains that bind.
They’re haunted by all they left behind
And can’t make out aught ahead,
Without footprints to follow or find
And no track to take instead.
The people are on their downtrodden way
To build a brand new mess;
They keep plugging along, each doleful day,
Through barren wilderness.
The dead don’t sleep but keep coming back,
At least in the people’s guilt-ridden minds
Who wander eastward, without a track,
Trying to see ahead while going blind.
Folks start falling down, at first one by one,
And passersby stop and stoop to lend a hand,
But under the heat of the beating sun,
Debilitated by thirst, they disband.
The dead are left to bury themselves,
As they drop down, one by one;
The soil receives their empty shells
While to death the living run.
*
Part Sixteen: The Primal Eldest Curse
Grass is growing on the street,
Which a pack of dogs polices;
Moisture builds within concrete,
Until it splits it to pieces.
From wind and rain, from cold and heat,
The building blocks expand;
The elements achieve the feat
Of turning them to sand.
The weather cools and then warms,
Termites sap both ridge and wall,
Fires start from lightning storms,
Wires snap, and bridges fall.
Brother Abel Cain felled with a thud,
Where brute force reigned supreme,
Where streets were stained with human blood
And paved with broken dreams.
Here flaming swords hid paradise,
Where multitudes crowded en masse,
Though most were just a sacrifice
To a sky all clouded with gas.
This is where the cars sped by,
Where hosts of homeless plied the streets,
Where everything was a lie,
To which the rich had front row seats.
Here slaves dispersed in waves and floods
And off their feet shook dust
Because the city needed blood
To satisfy its lust.
The ending of the play was bad,
Without time to rehearse:
The center-stage, the city had
The primal eldest curse.
*
Part Seventeen: The Line of Confusion and the Stones of Emptiness
Now stars and moon brighten the sky
And are not nightly dimmed;
Migrating birds know where to fly,
And whales know where to swim,
For buildings that confused the birds
At night with all their lights
Are powerless, since no one stirs
Inside these empty heights,
And the ships that plowed the sea
And drowned out mating calls
Are as silent as can be,
As town and city halls.
The window-glass begins to break
And hit the ground below,
For nothing lasts, and all it takes
For all the glass to go
Is rain getting in caulking cracks
And rusting the metal clips,
Which cannot hold gravity back
Long after the caulking chips.
So sheets of glass from windows fall,
Shattering on streets below.
Soon the buildings themselves, so tall,
Won’t withstand another blow.
All castles and kingdoms of pride
Are attacked and then sacked, bit by bit:
Time was not on history’s side
But was stacked, with the clime, against it.
As grass spreads over the urban sprawl
And anonymity nears,
The last still-standing skyscrapers fall,
And history disappears.
Now the serpent cannot bruise
The heel of man at night
Nor a bird’s flight be confused
By artificial light.
*
Biography
Erik Nelson was born in Madison, WI, in 1974, grew up in British Columbia, Canada, as well as several states in the United States, before obtaining a Masters degree in Literary Theory from the University of Dalarna, in Falun, Sweden; he then taught English at the college level in the deep south of the United States for ten years, before moving to the high plains of Colorado, where he currently lives, lucubrates and works as a librarian.
Tales From The Forest 