The Song of the Wellspring

Similar in subject to the flood gates. Wrote it after coming home from one of my night driving episodes.

The Song of the Wellspring

 

There is a mausoleum here

Where, coming near, all pretty things--

A curtain falls to cover them,

And bury them, where no kind Spring

Might call them forth to live again;

And so they end, in Never-was.

Above them, where the land is dry,

And where they died, a marker raised

To ‘memorate all good intent--

Which blindly went for making known,

But never knew the path was hard,

And often barred, and seldom sown.

 

But lo! The wellspring rises up!

This beating cup will never cease.

The ebb and flow of kindled hearts

Must tear apart their ardent seams--

Escape, or fill their cage to burst

(And which is worse: the silence or

The spoken truth, if poorly spoke?)--

To know no token self-reserve!

And so the wellspring carries on

A vibrant song, like piper’s play;

And all the notes, like pixies, fly--

And they will die, to see the day.

 

The curator of this strange land,

I understand, does not at all

The battle that is his to host;

Or how the most sensational

Of beating hearts can be transposed

In any known, fit, human speech;

And why, just now, his face turns red

When he has said… --why, not a thing!

But o! the thoughts that might have been

Just whispered, then--the words that died

Upon those dry and heavy lips:

Now taken in, to never rise.

 

He calls it ‘happiness’, inside,

But cannot hide he doesn’t know

The truth behind the wellspring’s song--

Why it was wrong to let it show?

And will she know his interned heart?

I find it hard to think she might;

For though it rages like the storm

Within its home--through such a night--

Where shackled by an overcome,

But honest, man, it screams for life.

But daylight is the enemy

And it will see--and it will die.