EPILOGUE. NATHANIEL
It was in
the park that I heard Nathaniel
tell his tale of hungry youth.
I waited when his voice fell still,
for new conclusion of a kind.
I think I frowned; his face said 'truth',
yet what was I to make of this?
He smiled and shrugged; I saw his mind
on other things, of long ago.
His tale was told, belief or no.
I sat beneath the spreading plane
that sheltered him, in times ago;
to watch the dazzle of the sunlight,
dapple shadows on the leaves.
I heard the waters chuckle, flow,
and twittered finches in the tree.
A place to rest and not to grieve
for laughing love and fruits untasted
or for lives, and living wasted.
"Who were they?" I had to ask him
hoping not to give him pain.
"She," he said, "was an ephemeral,
so she lived for just a day.
"I was as constant as the plane;
she saw me with the passing hours,
was fond of me, in her own way
perhaps as of an aging tree...
for that's the way she thought of me."
"She lived her whole life in a day?"
My horror must have chilled my tone.
"Don't pity her," Nathaniel said,
"for her it was the fated span."
"She died, and left you there alone?"
"But I was blessed to know her here.
And maybe you will understand,
One perfect life is rare indeed...
so seldom is the magic freed."
I wondered why he lingered there.
So many years had fluttered by;
I asked him straight; he answered that
he kept the anniversary:
the day his muse was born, to die.
He had some cherries in his pack,
the brightest fruit you'd ever see...
I left him as the sunlight died,
with memories personified.
Chapter 2. Maid of the Morning
Ephemera deconstructed (prose)