Afterward
When I emerged from the grey concrete
Of the basement dream,
Shuttered with doors
Through which my memory could not pass,
I could speak only poetry.
Though I longed to tell my story
In words clear as the fall of light
Across the wooded expanse
Which I can no longer enter.


I see the trees, silver and gold and young green,
As young as the world’s beginning;
Lost to me behind the veil of grey.
Only metaphors remain;
All thought subsumed in feeling
No longer knowing what I know.
Darker still, the shadows which wait above
And haunt the stairs with ghosts malevolent as time.


But words come flocking at last,
Frightened birds which perch
Upon my keyboard
Shed a feather upon my notebook,
Quill my pen with prose
So that I may tell the tale which echoes down time,
In more lives than hearts can bear,
Throats that close before the truth,
Minds that bend away from knowledge,
I, in their company, may speak at last,
Though words cannot convey the source
Of the acid darkness which devours the forgotten light.


They nest within the wood I have forgotten,
Agleam still with scattered sun
And fragmented with prism colors
Which I may trace and paint the story yet again,
So that reflection will undo the knotted heart.


But that is in a future yet to come.


Beth Wheeler, 1/13/01