Bard Of Lost Souls

Bard Of Lost Souls
© Surazeus
2018 06 26

Though I pedal my bike up the steep hill
of small Texas town where I was not born,
past huge red-brick church where my family sings
hymns to praise the emperor of the world,
to the library on the college campus,
I play I am the Hobbit on his quest
to win bright gold from blind dragon of greed.

With Gandalf I enter dark ancient archives
and search thick long-forgotten books of lore
to discover strange secret of the ring
encrypted in curving letters of Feanor,
then go outside in the hot Texas sun
and race my bike along white narrow sidewalks,
swerving around buildings with empty classrooms.

Sitting on cool rim of the sparkling fountain
at the Mizpah Gate to the college campus,
I open little black notebook to write
record of my quest on lined yellow pad,
inscribing with curving letters of Feanor
my adventures in the small Hobbit town
where the dragon slumbers beneath the church.

Gliding back downhill to my small green house,
I stop at yellow house where Brenda lives,
who smiles soft when I knock, and her brown eyes
glitter warm in the late afternoon sun
as we climb the fence behind our two homes
to the pasture across from our grade school,
and ride our ponies in the twilight zone.

Brenda is a graceful Elf with brown hair
and I am an awkward Hobbit, I muse,
but I tell her I love her anyway,
and she smiles as we gallop to the trees
where soft oak leaves hear the nothing we say,
then we ride back and put saddles away,
and I lie in bed, gazing at the moon.

I never find the gold of the church dragon,
though I invent new alphabet and language
for Ranika, my own fantasy world,
and after we move up north to Seattle
I never see my Elf Princess again,
but I go on long quest across America
and transform into the bard of lost souls.