Asked of him the goddess said,
“What thinks you in your mortal head?”
answered he, “Little very things,
that world thinking seems to brings.”
Looked at him with a question face
“What thinks you of the empty space?
That left I you to mark your make
To give and do for what you take.”
“I takes and tries to make my place
for occupies the empty space,
but makes I can’t the beauty you
has made for me from muds and dew.”
“Made I thems for help you live
I meanéd not to force you give
Back little gifts of cloud and tree
For you are only gift I see,
A treasure you has given me
By simply been what you will be.”
Looked he up from infant feet
Into the field with gold of wheat
Gazed to the ocean rifes with blue
Decided what for her he’d do
Built he a temple toward her sky
Where he could look to her and pry
For hear the wonders past his view
To learn of worlds green and new
Past years and grew he wise
For visions of the goddess eyes
Taught she him to till the plains
To sews the seed and reaps the grains
To build up walls and make of stone
To govern the world she’d made his own
Animals grew from the endless blue tides
And plants bore the bounty of young seeds’ divides
He watched the world trickle past
From breath to breath from first ‘till last
Of every creature under sky
From wolf to whale to butterfly
Evolving into newer things
To trek on paws and fly on wings
He watched as she explained the way
That death can spirit life away
How moon is night and sun is day
The tolls that all life has to pay
And watched he as from turning earth
A thing called man was given birth
He taught them how to till the plains
To sew the seeds and reap the grains
To build their walls of brick and stone
To live their lives in a world grown
They hailed him as a living god
Who gave them birth from sand and sod
But he described the goddess true
Who gave to him the ocean blue
And endless land to walk about
Where he could see and figure out
The hidden truths of passing time
Who never let him pass his prime
And as the people aged they found
That he by time was scarcely bound
They aged they died they buried dead
But saw not change his youthful head
They questioned him about his endless span
He’d never thought to measure by a man
And told them he had yet to mark his make
To give for everything he’d have to take
He told them that the goddess called him gift
And ever since then time had seemed to drift
The marveled at the true goddess’ might
And begged for her to heed their mortal plight
To give them life like him they knew
To live forever, pass each day as new
But silent in her vault of endless sky
She said naught but the wind and wandered by
As sun or moon or stars within the shade
She could not give to them she had not made
And in their fevered desperation’s try
They sent of human sacrifice onhigh
They spilled their blood upon the earth and stones
And got no compensation for their bones
But rain to wash away the slaughter’s end
And weep for those whose lives they would expend
And seeing how their desperation grew
The slaughters of the many and the few
He left their ranks and order fell away
As chaos shifted slowly to decay
Each people other blamed for his goodbye
And voices angry lifted to the sky
“For this,” screamed they of one to they another
“Never we stand again with vicious other
who orchestrated exit He from we
the faulted for the splitting us from he.”
And fell they then to quarrel of the loss
Of he who time the has for watch the moss
As grows upon the tree on skin of bark
What life birthed of the light dies for the dark
Those fought through dayrise fought through nighttime might
To rend of living eyes their lively light
And leave there waves of blood there field of red
To give form War there leaving world dead
He forlorn looked out on the blood-made sea
Past sand smooth hill that flowed with death debris
Himself felt he responsible and blame
For sparking war where ruins singe with flame
His ever heart while ticking time kept beating
He subtle felt his spirit’s life depleting
The goddess found his eyes to listen near
The screaming dead of war clung to his ear
“They of the earth come back to earth from life
when wind and sky and sea absolving strife
hold fast to bones of weary white and pain
and wash to glow like stars from timely rain
the living here one day evolve to dead
form then to mirror starlight overhead
the road is short but timing into long
and making here a heart grows ever strong
let hope hold you as hope held them to find
a way to make this timing seem more kind
in you my gift I give this world scale
you are the Time that living made their fail
without you hopes are far too slow to come
Time is the well that hoping springeth from
And giving them the time to mark their make
Who knows what they will give for what they take
They’ll grow and they will live and they will die
But they will strive and they will ever try
To leave behind their markings and their scars
Before they must retire to the stars
Time makes its mark with every passing day
In time my gift they all will find their way.”
He looking on the darkened hue of earth
Recalling what it had been at its birth
He saw emerging from the burning land
They made from wind and water and from sand
Survivors came as animal and man
And came together as a single clan
Their will to fight expended by the days
The flames of war no longer stood ablaze
And they began to fix what had been torn
And gave the earth a chance to be reborn
The flowers bloomed the rivers ran
The wind blew soft on the backs of man
In the wake of the war the earth seemed anew
From the death and decay upon which new life grew
He watched as their loss pulled the hurting abreast
As they buried their dead as hope grew in each chest
They prayed not for life never ending in span
But for life to return just as it had began
At a gradual pace bringing gradual change
In their time governed world with eternity’s range
The fields grew back gold the grass grew in green
The sea pulsed in waves with a blue and white sheen
And man began to till the plains
To sew new seeds and reap new grains
They built their walls of brick and stone
Forgetting he who once had shown
The people of the earth to thrive
How to create to stay alive
The one who once their envy stirred
The wrath of war their want incurred
That he who watched the world go by
Beside the sea and ‘neath the sky
That he who with the goddess spoke
Of birch and elm and pine and oak
Who watched the shifting faces of the earth
And learned that death would ever bring rebirth