Weird Spirit I Found

Weird Spirit I Found
© Surazeus
2023 12 16

Whatever I found in the swirling mist 
while riding the car on the highway east 
from Seattle into the mountain range
remains with me as the spirit more strange 
than what Apollo found on Helicon 
and left for me in woods of Avalon. 

Through eerie shadow of the mountain vale 
I retrieve lyre of Hermes from dark soil, 
and when I strum its strings my weird spells cast 
illusion of my Muse as faceless ghost 
who glows above Takoma Mountain peak 
so memories of my ancestors awake. 

They swirl around me on wild mountain wind 
to conjure visions of their lost dreamland 
around dark Lake Verkana where fierce wolves 
race with herds of horses and raven elves 
to golden ziggurat where Ishtar reigns 
as sorceress who records dreams with runes. 

Though I stroll streets of Seattle at night 
past bars and galleries toward candle light 
that gleams from bookstore maze of secret tomes, 
I remember every road my heart roams 
ten thousand years Scythia to Oregon 
on my way to redesign Babylon. 

I thought I would find in library halls 
epics of heroes who play noble roles 
preserving wisdom sages wrote in books, 
but stumble instead over river rocks 
on mountain trail where demons haunt my steps 
to evade the American cyclops. 

Hitchhiking east to find the Lake of Dreams 
where First Mother sings in honey sunbeams, 
I wander streets of Miami at noon 
flooded with rain of the albatross moon, 
then play lyre of Mercury by the beach 
to tame fierce passion of the Bandersnatch. 

Weird spirit I found in the mountain mist 
that shrouds Seattle to the ocean coast 
glows in my heart with cosmic energy, 
so I compose Astarian liturgy 
for lost tribes gathered in ruined steel halls 
to sing after civilization falls. 

All idols are illusions of dead gods 
who once were men walking old signless roads 
for fertile land where they can build their home 
and feast on apples by the flowing stream 
till invaders colonize it as theirs 
by divine right of never-changing stars.