Tale of the Unicorn

Artist Unknown - Common Domain

Posted for Day 3 #NaPoWriMo and for #OpenLinkNight @dVersePoets Pub

In onceupon time unicorns walked with men
In hereandnow time she yearns for a guardian
On nursery walls they gamboled it seems--
Pressed into her memory, she dreams of him.

Awake she rambles pastures deep.
Sometimes a phantom horn takes shape
Lit in dense fog where objects fade
Or retreats from view. And again she sleeps.

At the edge of woods she sees him waiting
Bound to her through time, returned from other worlds
Last of the seven houses, few have seen his radiance
Only young girls at the edge of waking.

Into her arms he leaps and brings with him his horn
The flood has taken all and another age has come
The age of mystery and maid meet once again.
The mysteries unravel from the lost unicorn.

He speaks of Asallam, the Mighty from whom
The waters came and from the Garden did produce
The dawn of Ilvilon where gentle Vata,
(who comes at the end of days) knows
Of Isfendarmad's (keeper of the darkness) shame.

He tells her that the races of men have been sundered
From the guardians. Men abandoned the Golden Wood
To follow their earthly folly. Yet the guardians
Keep the memories before men blundered.

Where each house had a name; each made of light
Within them secrets were kept of unibex and men.
For the light had been given to both once
When earth's center point defined it right.

Darkness lay beyond and began to grow.
Much was bound to darkness and was never seen.
The light would fade and fog would roll between
Houses that bred  lies, and thieving sorrows.

In her arms there's the innocence of youth,
She preserves the history where two are writ.
She hides, though, the lies, pain and deceit.
She awaits light at the end shining truth.


© Gay Reiser Cannon * 4.2.2012 * All Rights Reserved
Posted for Day 3 National Poetry Writing Month
Not quite an epithalamion but a song of love and innocence
Started for Claudia's post on Fairy Tales