(A long form Haiku written in the High Sierra, 2014)
The witches have gone
Into the old twisted trees,
Waiting out the age.
The trolls are boulders,
No longer changed by moonlight,
Fully calcified.
All the Hidden Folk
(Gnomes, fairies, subtle spirits)
Have slipped out of sight.
Swept from the corners
Of our homes and wild places,
Lost or abandoned.
Or perhaps they work
Tirelessly and in toil
For our attention.
Our poor feeble eyes,
Hobbled by a mundane world,
See precious little.
The seductive screens
Benumb imagination,
The most human sense.
A dull instrument
Makes only dull measurements,
A poor way to judge.
Yet we trust the view
That life is only what is seen,
Perhaps even less.
Meanwhile magic waits
Patiently behind it all,
At the center too.
The unseens beings
Are numberless I don’t doubt,
Busy in all things.
Summoning the wind
To shake pollen from pine boughs,
Scattering life force.
Stoking tiny fires
In the hearth of every seed,
Quickening, bursting.
Grinding stones to dust,
Subsuming mountain ranges,
Belching up islands.
These are the duties
Of small gods and great ones,
The named and unnamed.
Who could hang a word
On the many hands that move
Through Creation.