The willow

The moon slowly faded

Into the damp clouds

And that old willow tree stood still

Surrounded by great crowds.

The willow, on any other occasion seemed powerful

Today it had captured their gazes,

But as it had been cursed

It was still lonely surrounded by these faces.

No gale could make its branches sway,

No leaves would ever grow,

No bird would ever come its way;

Yet the might the willow would usually show.

What a shallow heap it was now,

Just a burden on this land,

Which was once been as beautiful as a dream

Now rotting away at its hand.

Until now, though, it was what I’d seen

Yet tonight it had cried in despair

For sorrows gripped its heart,

If you could call it a heart that is,

For that heart was as cold as death’s kiss.

But today it begged and wished

And cried for its sins;

It repented for those lives,

Those mercilessly taken.

Somewhere near its outspread roots

A girl of maybe ten,

With cheeks that blushed as red as roses,

Stood wondering about when...

When would the tree crumple

And turn into a shrivelling mess?

So the angel would finally come down from heaven,

And may the willow be blessed!

A dusty old book lay in some dark corner

Far away from that barren land,

The cover sheathed with dust

And ink a dull black.

Inside the book lay a leaf,

A leaf as old as time probably.

The leaf belonging to our old willow,

It was found by somebody.

That somebody being an old woman

With hair as white as snow,

She spoke something unintelligible,

Her breaths too shallow.

Those were her very last

Now we know why the willow cried

It was this old woman who had cursed the willow

Sixty years before this night.

It was then that she had been young

As young as the first spring’s bloom

But she came back home to find

The darkest waiting doom.

‘twas that willow, the culprit,

That had embraced darkness

And slowly suffocated

All her family, that is.

Now she lay dying

With nobody around her

And she prayed for it to find peace

That it’s spirit would be free.

Then she took her last breath

And the willow did too.

It fell into a wreck

And the dawn broke in soon.

 

I went there this morning

And saw a plant sprout

It had the brightest colour

That you could think about.

Author's Note

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