Echoes Coming Back from Burned Violets Sent to Her

Echoes Coming Back from Burned Violets Sent to Her

L. Edgar Otto 24 April, 2012

Hero came to the grave where he had prepared her for the journey beyond her lifetime. One spring ago since the toll on those who took shelter in the caves against a long and cold winter. Now, like the sunflower that faces the burning star he wanted to send her flowers to cheer her on, and to find surcease from the mocking awakening of prairie blooms.

He prepared some violets and burned them that their spirits would follow her, point the way as he had done laying her out to the four directions of the spinning sky that this stars not seen so far from the fountain of auroras would follow her as she faced the greater light of darkness that cannot burn and heals against all wilting.

She was not much more than dreams and his love for her stood to his mind as deep as the mysteries she did not care to think about or explore. She thought his game of counting stones of many colors and casting bones or arranging the nest with patterns of painted sticks, knotted leather strings she said was cute. She bore his sons. Her promise missed.

He collected the eighteen colors he used as runes to paint on the cave walls in the dark to record the dream time and praise the fallen beasts given in the hunt or the passing of the chief, or the victory of the wars. Men in time alone who seek to decorate the subterranean but he did not know why he craved the pigments more than food, or often love.

The little one was with him. Young enough to think of him a king or god, someone to fear who could see everything in this world, to fear him that he saw beyond the stars that nothing could be hidden. Just the average shaman in the end with his tricks and lights and slight of hand he put his cell phone to the bar code on her tombstone.

They watched her sing as she prepared the meal and plant the seeds for corn, hang chimes made of shells above his crib, scoot away the hound dot from his sleep and growing dreams of the wild birds that ate from her hand. But somehow in this world more filled with light, cycles of the moon, there was no more room for ashes even in the caves.

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Footnote: I know there will be more to explore it is so hard or perhaps meaningless to wonder where a work or journey begins or ends- and my drive to do this has doubled and would be quadruples if I did not have external problems, that and what still must learn about this virtual medium, its changing tools. But things in the theme of this blog, in the direction of the course of creative philosophy and science, seem to be going well and close to a better path of enquiry after all as if I have said enough for now- so perhaps I can return awhile to the poems and music.


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