Leaving the Mountain
By Susan Dale
A band of travelers are being waved off by the wand of a Moi sorcerer; a wand which cast its fearful horoscope over them; a fear of the unknown.
Two Moi torchbearers hold fiery torches at the entrance of their village. At the entrance, a banyan tree releases its spirits of farewell. These spirits in the form of butterflies spread black and butter wings for flight into the jungles to escape the monsoons.
The Moi, previously packed up in army trucks, were now bumping down ridges of flattened grasses, which marked a herd of elephants that earlier passed by.
The trucks’ wheels groaned and splashed through rivulets of mud and water.
-Down paths bordering sacred grottos and the cave temples cut into a side of the mountain.
Twilight dropped the night fishermen casting nets of broken images taking shelter under the trucks’ tarps and the refugees who wondered, as they were leaving their mountain village, what sacrifice had they forgotten to offer to the gods who were offended and taking revenge.
With stricken eyes the refugees watched their village fading … huts of bamboo with thatched roofs surrounding the long house of once tribal meetings and resounding celebrations.
Fading … rice paddies, and mountain streams. All smearing into an Asian sketch of inks running together under tearful skies.
Going, going ... their fathers’ coffins left behind in the mists.
Now left to roam alone on the wide ridges of their village, the white deer of sanctity, that when it passed their village, they were blessed with seven years good luck.
Goodbye to the banyan tree spreading and taking root to form groves of grace; farewell to the grove’s butterflies.
-Never to be felt again the revengeful mother turned lynx that often roamed their village nights.
-Fading into whispers growing faint; silenced into the back of beyond.
Misted away within the rain-drenched mountain, the tomorrows of their yesterdays.
- - -
Susan’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Tryst 3, Word Salad, Pens On Fire, Ken *Again, Hackwriters, and Penwood Review. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.
By Susan Dale
A band of travelers are being waved off by the wand of a Moi sorcerer; a wand which cast its fearful horoscope over them; a fear of the unknown.
Two Moi torchbearers hold fiery torches at the entrance of their village. At the entrance, a banyan tree releases its spirits of farewell. These spirits in the form of butterflies spread black and butter wings for flight into the jungles to escape the monsoons.
The Moi, previously packed up in army trucks, were now bumping down ridges of flattened grasses, which marked a herd of elephants that earlier passed by.
The trucks’ wheels groaned and splashed through rivulets of mud and water.
-Down paths bordering sacred grottos and the cave temples cut into a side of the mountain.
Twilight dropped the night fishermen casting nets of broken images taking shelter under the trucks’ tarps and the refugees who wondered, as they were leaving their mountain village, what sacrifice had they forgotten to offer to the gods who were offended and taking revenge.
With stricken eyes the refugees watched their village fading … huts of bamboo with thatched roofs surrounding the long house of once tribal meetings and resounding celebrations.
Fading … rice paddies, and mountain streams. All smearing into an Asian sketch of inks running together under tearful skies.
Going, going ... their fathers’ coffins left behind in the mists.
Now left to roam alone on the wide ridges of their village, the white deer of sanctity, that when it passed their village, they were blessed with seven years good luck.
Goodbye to the banyan tree spreading and taking root to form groves of grace; farewell to the grove’s butterflies.
-Never to be felt again the revengeful mother turned lynx that often roamed their village nights.
-Fading into whispers growing faint; silenced into the back of beyond.
Misted away within the rain-drenched mountain, the tomorrows of their yesterdays.
- - -
Susan’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Tryst 3, Word Salad, Pens On Fire, Ken *Again, Hackwriters, and Penwood Review. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.
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