Stories Remembered For Centuries

Stories Remembered For Centuries
© Surazeus
2018 03 11

Glowing silver as the round eyeball moon,
the television tube in the wood box
flickers in the dark curtained living room
in the small green house on the Texas plain
where trees dance joyfully in blowing rain
like they have danced for fifty million years,
illuminating the pale face of the boy
who watches Gilligans Island and Star Trek.

He watches the history of the world there,
performed by the nameless ghosts glowing white
in the snow-veiled shadows of memory
when people who wear the costumes and masks
of people who died from spinning of time
replay the actions of love and despair
to demonstrate the vain search of mankind
for power to control destiny of death.

But all those characters of history,
and even the players who wear their faces
before the hungry camera of our eyes,
crumble dead to form the dirt of the ground
that curves into the undulating bulge
of this global stage where we wake from hope
to play tale of our own adventure quest
as if cameras watch our actions and words.

Before the camera was devised, to catch
the flashing atoms that beam from our bodies
in undulating waves of spiritual hope,
the actions of great heroes were preserved
in letters that resemble trees on sheets
of paper pressed flat from fibers of trees
by minds of dreamers who remembered tales
recited in feasting halls of stone castles.

So many people seeking to survive
lived and died in the game of eat or die
over ten thousand years of spinning time,
yet only the names of prophets and kings
are preserved in ancient myths as the gods
whose masks contain the souls of many people
contained in one ideal story of action
though all are now the dust beneath our feet.

The stories remembered for centuries,
copied many times by the hands of scribes
hunched over manuscripts in writing halls
while kings battle to wear the crown of power,
are those tales in which the writer presents
special characters who participate
in particular events of great action
as representatives of their zeitgeist.

Turning off the television, the boy
walks outside into late afternoon glow
of the gold sun beaming through silver trees
still wet from rain, and steps onto his bike
to glide on spinning wheels past silent homes
far from the small town on the Texas plain
to explore every city of the land,
wondering what role he will play in the game.

Climbing the misty slopes of Mount Takoma,
the boy follows raven song to the grove
where nothing whispers among tall pine trees
and no one sings, so he opens his mouth
and sings the voice all his ancestors dreamed,
then carves the oldest oak tree in the world
into guitar that vibrates in his hands,
and he walks, singing, sea to shining sea.

The stories of all the people who lived
he saw glowing on television screens
now flash bright in the visions of his eyes
so his words project ancient characters
who shimmer as ghosts in the ringing air
when he stands on the streets of every town
and chants weird spells that conjure memories
how we rose singing from the lake of dreams.

Ten thousand poets sea to shining sea
stand on stage in studios and theaters,
performing tales of long-dead characters
in competition for glory and fame
as the greatest storyteller of all time,
till we all freeze into statues of brass
that stand silent in the song of clear rain
till the sun expands and swallows our world.