1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
and the great immature star fell from the sky
as if the morn came too early,
daylight was shed upon my teary face and the tears will perpetually come along with the seasons,
Each year I will remember my star,
I will bow my head in loving memory.
Lilacs bloom perennially, so did your love
Love blooming as miraculously as birds singing…
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, I was doing as I do best. I am a reclusive soul and I love the solidarity of living alone. I live a detached life from others reading and writing, but I am not alone. I am here, a bush of lilacs grows that I feel attached to and an cream-colored thrush that sings beautifully lives nearby.
I almost feel bad that the thrush doesn’t really live. She mainly sings here based on her emotional mindset. If she is happy, then she sings and when she is sad, she sings. When she is angry or annoyed, makes a shrill noise that almost replicates her annoyance, or at least that is how I understand her tone.
I mainly stand or sit and write at the desk that I made a while back. I write of the things that I know, and I may add little grains of fiction to add a bit of fun. For instance, I wrote a story about a boy who went to the sea for the first time. I takes experiences from my childhood, but I can’t remember my own childhood perfectly, so I am often adding some fictional elements. Mainly for fluidity and consistency.
Somedays, the thrush seems to sing to me. To inspire a story or a poem. As if the solitary thrush knows that I need some kind of inspiration. It begins weaving a melody while I almost create a world in harmonic unison with the bird. I really feel like the bird has a better understanding of the outside world than most humans do.
I think my understanding of people is that many are simply are disconnected from the natural world. I connect with the many Natural Acts that help preserve. The National Parks act and the clean air act to name a few, but those are just words. These are too, and only actions are true in this world, or that’s what someone else told me one. Actions that may or may not be understood to be wise. An instance of this occurred just before I left the civilized world for this,
~
2
O powerful star, you swayed my heart
O night, you were the star just the way that I was the star…
*
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m doing this to you? You did this to yourself when you decided to leave your family and live on your own.”
I really want to yell back at her that I am having just as hard of a time dealing with this loss as she is, so she can just try to be understanding, but I feel like I would only perpetuate the argument that was already running out of control.
“You may be my star, but you are a really bitchy star.” I think I may have just set her off with that. Shit.
Kayla’s rage seems to be too much for most people to comprehend. I can hardly tolerate it. I fell in love with her at a young age, but her temper was always a bit of a turn-off.
*
Some people, like my wife, that are critical of my life in some seclusion think that I remain here solely for my own benefit, or that I merely want to escape my problems, my fears and my memory. On some note, I may be here for my own benefit, and I at one point I was running away from something, but that isn’t the only reason I am out here.
“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society…”
(Emerson Nature)
This is a quote that I often look to that I find inspiration from and some may assume that I use as justification for my life alone. Although it would be unfair and not right to avoid mentioning the fact that Emerson also goes on to write that a person cannot read or write because that’s not true seclusion. I agree with him. I feel that I am not truly separate from the rest of the world and I am connected to the world with my writing, through the song of the thrush and a blonde girl that comes by every once in a while.
I am at my desk, as I usually am, trying to understand the reason that worms come out of hiding after a day that it rains. I am thinking when all of a sudden a tap on my door wakes me from my philosophical stupor. I look back and don’t see anything through the window, so I walk towards the door at the other side of my hut. I open the door, and look out only to see the fields in the distance, the thrush’s tree, and the patch where the lilacs bloom yearly.
I feel a tap on my upper leg and I jump thinking this might be the tapping of a hungry, wild animal. Yet this tapping seems to be far more light-hearted and not malicious at all. I look down and notice a flash of citron curly locks. I also see some blue eyes that remind me of…someone.
“How’s it going Mr. Ginger?”
“Hi Rose! I love your hair today, but I think I mentioned to you. You don’t need to call me Mr. anything. That feels too formal. You can call me Walter or W or anything else.”
“Anyway Mr. Anything. How’s it going?”
She asks me that and I roll my eyes, “Good. I wrote a new nursery rhyme would you like to hear it?”
“Sure!”
“Birds fly high, I am a guy. You are not, so what are you?
“That’s not a very good nursery rhyme you know.”
“Do you think that you can do better?”
Rose continues to tell me a rhyme that is rubbish, but I admire it. There is a sense of happiness in it that I don’t want to mess up with my adult-stuff. That’s what this girl Erin that I knew used to call it at least.
*
I leave the safety of my desk, walk across the room. I find that I get an itch on my back, but I cannot reach the spot, so I walk outside and rub up and down against a tree that has grown almost perfectly only a few feet from my hut. This tree has a few branches on it, and growing perfectly may be a weird way to describe the tree because it has not grown perfectly for itself. The tree is still pretty short and I believe that it has stopped growing up. The tree is only a little taller than I am and it seems to be a dwarf compared to the other behemoths.
Looking up through the branches of the tree, I usually able to see a star that I have named Twinkly. The star may have an actual name, but I only recently discovered it. Twinkly seems to come out every night more or less. That is, if there are no clouds. I mainly see her in the evening sky, so through the branches of the tree, but when it gets very cold out and sometimes there is frost gnawing at my feet or my shack is wearing a white coat, she is in the east.
It is the beginning of the colder months, so she should be traveling from west to east, so a little between my shack and the trees. I look where she should be, but she is not there. I assume that the sun has not gone to bed yet, so she may be too shy to come out. I do not know what to make of this for sure because I assume that I am too far from Twinkly to ask her why she is not showing up. I return to my cottage and lay down.
~
I enter another world, I assume that I am not awake but I don’t know if I am having a dream or having a vision of some sort. Twinkly and I are close, but far enough from her that I can’t touch her. I can feel her warmth as if she is radiating heat but not enough to burn me. A feeling that is somewhat familiar, but I don’t remember where the feeling comes from. I look over and she has taken humanoid shape. I think that I am in love because she is the most brilliant thing that I have seen. I cannot see her face though. She seems to be staring at something, so I walk over to join her. Now we are almost next to each other. I can almost touch her. Instead I stare along with her.
At her feet, there is a brown lump, yet I cannot figure out the lump’s true form. Is it a pine cone, is it shit? Is it a bird? I begin to worry about the thrush. I have not event found a name that fits her yet. I want to reach down to turn the brown pile over, but some ethereal force prevents me from even moving.
At some point, Twinkly looks at me. I have never seen her face although I imagine that is will be just as brilliant as the rest of her. I am wrong though. She has no eyes, just two sockets that seem to intertwine as if they are supposed to be one. Her mouth seems to be made of pure darkness with a bright orb at the center. The darkness swirling around the center creates an even larger orb. It is beautiful, but then again it is scary. Beautiful chaos.
As soon as she looks at me, a shrill note that sounds like annoyed cat or something else that I cannot place. The noise seems to erupt from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I cannot pinpoint the sound, but I imagine that it is coming from Twinkly and the lump.
When the sound reaches the peak of its ferocity, Twinkly begins to shake. It is as if there is something at the center of Twinkly that simply wants to escape. After a few moments of shaking, Twinkly explodes. She is a series of violent and vibrant colors that I have never seen before. The sight is enough to inspire anyone to start singing, even though this person that I knew once told me “you can’t even sing!”
A few moments pass, and the erupted Twinkly consumes the lump on the ground. I’m also consumed by the brilliance, or at least my human body is. I remain a thing looking on although not a participant in physically being present anymore. Something happens at the spot where the lump used to be. A green patch sprouts and then a few buds, which I assume are flowers. The flowers grow into bulbs and bloom within maybe a minute of sprouting. Then something, somewhere starts to sing. I recognize the music. The song is the beautiful melody that I have the most difficult time placing. It may simply be a song that I am remembering from before I left into nature and left the rest behind. The song seems to carry my non-existent form towards the flowers. I get a close-up of them. I want to smell them, but I can’t. The flowers die within a few seconds of me floating over to smell them.
~
I jolt forward. Usually I like to take my time waking up, but this time a sense of urgency pushes me out of the kingdom of dreams into the mortal world. I get out of the bed that is simply a few pieces of wood supporting a few piles of straw where some wool blankets remain. I get up and walk over to the wash-basin that I have fashioned out of a bucket that I assume was used for washing a while back. I use this bin for cleaning, but now I need it to help me understand this event. Whatever has really just happened.
I walk over to the bucket and run my hands through some of the water the must be left over from yesterday’s wash. I cup my hands and splash a little bit of the murky water on my face. It does not seem to wake me up much, but whatever. Worries start to hurl past me and some hit me. What has happened to the thrush? Do I really need to worry? Am I just going crazy? I have questions that need to be answered, so I walk outside.
If I was a thrush, where would I rest?
I remember a favorite spot of the thrushes to roost, so I walk over to the tree that resides just outside my hut and check on the side that is opposite of the entrance to my hut. I know that the thrush has been inside at some point because there are a few feathers near the base and the nest is still warm; although I’m not sure where the bird is.
I look around the tree, and think that the bird may have fallen out of his nest, but she is nowhere to be found. I turn around in place, looking for any signs of avian life, but I see nothing. On the other hand, I see a trail of feathers on the ground starting maybe three meters from the tree. I decide that this is the best lead that I have to find the thrush, so I begin to follow it.
I follow the trail thinking of my beloved thrush. I worry that I may never hear her beautiful song if something has happened to her. I pass the rock with the shades of brown in the form of moss. Sorry rock, but I can’t rest. I keep walking for maybe another minute and a half and then I almost step on this brown lump. I am reminded of the lump, and I lean in to smell it to see if it smells of shit, but as I get closer to it, I notice the odd patterns on each segment.
I recognize those patterns, but from where. Then the lump moves and it makes a chirping sound. I come to realize that I’ve found the thrush. I rush back to the house and grab a blanket and then return. I pick up the bird that appears to be clinging to life. I cannot imagine how it entered this state. I want to ask her,
What happened to you? Why are you so cold?
But I fear that I won’t get an answer.
I return to the shack along with her. Where can I put her where she will probably do the best? I resolve to place her near the window that I made in the shack simply by cutting out part of the wall and reinforcing the area with wooden boards that I borrowed from a local construction site. I realize that she’ll probably also want something to eat at some point. I know that she does not eat the same things that I eat, but I can’t figure out what.
I remember seeing her one day. I was near the stream and while she hopped around pulling up worms and picking at insects. I know of a meadow nearby that I assume house various bugs and other things with six legs, so I grab a cup that I and I walk out of the hut. Behind the hut lives the meadow along with probably a few hundred worms, grasshoppers and other things.
At first, I have some difficulty grabbing insects, but mostly grasshoppers. I’m a little squeamish when it comes to picking them up. I always think that when they jump, they are biting me. After a few minutes, three falls, two missed chances to get some kind of crawly thing, and a skinned knee, I find a worm that is simply chilling next to a nest of what I assume are ants.
I snatch the worm and then pick up a bunch of ants. They are pretty big, so I assume that the bird will like them. The ants keep escaping the cup, so I have to crush part. Soon there’s just a mass of ant-blob just sitting in the corner. The bunch are clearly alive, but now they aren’t going anywhere. I think that the cup of ants and worm will be alright for the bird right now, but just in case I stick around and get a few more. I snag two more worms and some smaller and slower grasshoppers.
I take the cup back to the hut and I wonder how to serve the bugs to the bird. I imagine that I can just lay the insects out, but I also worry that they will run away, so I grab a lid that I don’t use a ton that I assume will work to keep them in place and allow the bird to rest. I also worry about the insects being too difficult for the thrush to eat, so I go outside to the nearby stream, grab a large but pretty flat and crush all the insects into a mush. The sight of the mush makes me gag a bit, but the mush isn’t for me. The bird will hopefully love it. I don’t actually know if she will like it, but I will try for her sake.
I return to her with the mush and I empty it on the tray the I have placed at her side. She already seems to be doing a little better. She appears able to stand now. She walks over to the mush pecks at it to see what it is. Leans in to test it to see if it is alright and flits her wings. I assume she is annoyed because she is kind of a diva, but she leans in and eats the rest of the mush. I am ecstatic because I think that I’ve done a good job.
She looks up at me to as if to say come on Mr. Hermit. Is that all you have? I panic. Does she really want more? I guess I can find some more. I tell her to wait. I grab the cup, which actually still houses a grasshopper and a worm, so I dump those on to the tray. The grasshopper jumps around and looks like it might jump away, but at the peak of one of the hops, the thrush catches it in her beak. I’m even happier. She now seems to have a lot more energy.
I go to the stream and roll over a few rocks. I find about five worms and a few other things. I bring them inside and I dump them on to the tray. Almost immediately, the thrush slurps all but two of them up. I am not sure why she leaves two alone, but then I realize. The two that she doesn’t even touch appear much wider than the others. I thought they were just really big worms at first, but now I realize that they are leaches. I scoop the back into the cup and they I throw them as far behind my house as I can.
The next few days are good. The thrush returns to its spirited self. Though Twinkly has not returned. I am a little worried for it at first; although I do not actually know if I should worry about a light in the sky.
One night though, it has finally gotten dark enough for me to see the stars and I look up. The colors are amazing and I cannot help but think there is something that can come from this that can be understood as a epiphany. I also wonder if anyone has ever felt the same way. I mean looked up at the sky and had some kind of mind-altering experience. Someone must have. The skies are too beautiful not to cause some kind of sublime experience that may be explainable.
As I am looking into the sky, my eye falls on the spot where Twinkly used to dwell. I notice that some other form of light has taken Twinkly’s place. With a bitter expression I think, Something has already taken its place. Then I remember that shape and color of Twinkly and realize that I have never seen anything like this before. Twinkly looked of a four-sided shape of a very white color. This almost looks like a circle with a dot at the center and the outside is blue. The dot, which is tiny even compared to Twinkly, is rather red. I resolve to sleep and think about it tomorrow. Who knows, Twinkly could have taken a new form.
After the thrush has had some time to heal, I hear a familiar song resonating. At first, I simply hear the thrushes wonderful warbling, but after a few seconds I hear human words. I look out to see what is going on. The sound is familiar but I cannot understand why they are familiar.
“Hi Mr. Anything!” The sound comes out in a harmonic excitement. I look over. Rose has come back. I smile and all senses of fear and somberness that the thrush may die simply vanish.
“Hi rose-” For some reason, I black out.
I fall hard on the floor but I am no longer earthborn and this realm no longer holds me. I enter another dream-like state where I merely am in a floating vessel. I hear music that sounds so much like the thrush’s song, but also like another that I can now place. I now know why I couldn’t remember it before. I remember the moment that I lost my previous life and all of the things that I used to love. I see the same humanoid form that was Twinkly in the previous dream-like state. The humanoid looks up at me, screams again but quieter this time than in the previous dream. She explodes and engulfs everything. It’s as if nothing exists anymore because the dream-world has been engulfed in her immense bright light and then returns to black.
Again, I am torn from sleep, although I have no idea where I am at first. I wipe the sweat that has accumulated from my forehead. Rose is right above me. I am still on the floor and I can’t assume anything less. I can’t imagine that she could ever lift me since she is about seven and I am a pretty big man. I awkwardly stir and eventually I look at her lovingly as if she is my daughter. I remember now though that I had a daughter. I simply thank Rose, but I tell her that she has to leave. I don’t tell her that she can never come back because she reminds me of Erin. I wouldn’t have been able to tell her. I can’t latch on to people, but non-human things are completely fine I suppose.
*
I’ve called the thrush Erin because the name reminds me of my past life. I was once a regular businessman. I married my high school sweetheart and worked as a newspaper editor for the local New York times off-shoot, and loved everything about my work. I loved the cubicle that was about the size of a small bathroom, the cheap old dell all-in-one that they supplied myself and everyone in the office with. I loved the shitty coffee that would brew every morning and I loved living only about ten minutes from the office.
After about a year of being with my wife, we had a child. I named her Erin. I loved her almost as much as her mother. She was a spitting image of her though she had my blue eyes and she sang so beautifully I could hardly imagine her coming from something as bland as myself. I may not be giving myself or the love of my life, Kayla, credit where credit is due. She was given many awards for singing in chamber choirs and being one of the best to do so on the East Coast.
I was so proud of my daughter too when she was accepted in to a choir with the best voices in the state of New York. Then even further, when she was asked to sing alongside girls her age throughout the New England area.
I loved hearing her voice and when and sometimes, when I was extremely bored with a project for work, she would wander into my studio. I would try to shoo her out, but she would bat her beautiful blue eyes and twirl her blonde locks. I would melt and succumb to the fact that I loved her, and she would read through some of the articles that I was writing. Soon enough she would come up with a song made of the headlines that she decided were the most fun.
When she was diagnosed with Leukemia, I was broken. Not just heart-broken, but I could hardly walk, eat or even sleep. I spent countless hours next to her hospital bed at the Cancer Center. I would sit next to her, holding her mother and and her hand and I would simply stare for a few seconds. Then someone would get nervous and I would read the poetry that I had just started to write.
That wasn’t too difficult to handle, but once she started with the neuropathy (nerve damage), I lost it. I could not feed her anything at first. I tried so hard and I would bring up a spoon filled with soup, it would all spill out (luckily not on you). Kayla tried as well, but with a similar result; although she spilled almost the entire bowl onto the bed. The nurse had to help switch the covers out so Erin wouldn’t get burned. In the end, only the nurse with the steadiest hand could help Erin. That is until the chemotherapy destroyed your hunger…
~
“O great star disappear’d! An impostor that hides and distracts, yet I will never forget.
O cruel hands that hold me powerless!”
*
Erin
*
Cancer is alright. My parents have been with me all the way. I really don’t know what cancer is, but I know that I have it and I know that I means that every couple week, I come in and sweet people poke my arm with stuff and I sit in a chair for a few hours.
The first few weren’t too terrible. I simply lost some hair and my legs and stuff got smaller. It got to a point where I now need a wheelchair to get around. The last two have been pretty shitty (I heard my parents using that word but they told me not to say it since it isn’t nice). I have had a lot of paint. My leg (I guess that’s where the cancer was) has been hurting a lot. I also try to eat a little bit each day, but the moment I sit in the Cancer Chair (that’s what I call the place that I am brought for cancer stuff,) I puke. It gets so bad some times that my stomach and throat begin to hurt and I can’t eat for a while.
~
“You, with me,
but were you really with me?”
*
Walt
*
After six months of treatment that didn’t work, Erin’s body just seemed to give up.
Through waves of sobs I managed to yell “I love you.” That was the last thing I said to her. She was gone.
Now more than ever, I felt broken. “If you don’t start coming in to work Walter, then I’m afraid we will have to let you go. I know you lost your daughter, but the world keeps moving.” So, I lost my job. I let the world move without me. My wife no longer could see me. “You remind me too much of her. Your eyes are the same as hers.” The papers came in the mail a few days later. You can only imagine what that did to me. I felt like nothing was keeping me tethered to the mortal world, so I went to a cheap apartment in Rutland. I almost never tell anyone that I lived there. It doesn’t feel important.
“What’s that guy doing? He is so creepy.”
Some sweet ladies appear to be admiring Walter as he writes. Or at least he assumes that they are admiring him while he sits on the roof of his porch in a bathrobe and writes. This isn’t taken too kindly by his landlord,
“Why are you doing this? Don’t you worry about the stability of the roof?”
“Does it really matter? Stability is just an illusion. Anyway, I’m paying my rent on time-”
“That’s the thing Mr-”
“Walter. Please I’m not married anymore. Call me Walter.”
“Anyway Mr… Walter, you haven’t payed me in about a month. I have heard that you lost a child, but get over it. The world isn’t perfect. Innocent people die.”
“What are you saying?”
“Simply pay the rent in the next few days or get out.”
If you can imagine it, I was evicted in only a few days. I had given up hope in the human world. I lost my job, Kayla, my home and Erin. I simply wanted to forget, so I moved into a small clearing near a brook, and I built a hut out of corrugated metal and began to forget. Soon enough I planted lilacs, knowing they would bloom perennially, so I could forget and they would remember all of the things and people from my past life.
I remained in the same place for about a year. People somehow heard about me. Most people left me alone, but one girl visited me. She told me of this boy she fell in love with. I had a hard time talking to this girl at first because she had blue eyes. She must have gotten pregnant or lost interest because she stopped coming by after a while.
After a few years, some birds began flying by the area. They didn’t remain more than a month or two at a time; although I think this was a special place to them because they laid eggs here once. I never figured out what happened to those eggs though.
*
After forgetting and remembering my entire past, I begin to cry.
How could I ever forget something so beautiful?
I remember planting the lilacs so I would not need to remember Kayla, Erin, or any of the pain that went along at all.
Along with the formation of lilacs, which have only recently bloom’d again, I place a circle or stones and a tablet with the inscription, “In loving memory of Erin. You were a daughter, a teacher, a student, and most of all, a friend.”
Over the last couple days, I have been working on a series of poems. At first, I thought that the poem was just a bunch of pretty words. I now know that the poem is far more than just that.
“Now that you have left this natural world,
You can join our families in the vast heavenly bodies…
When I leave this world too, I will join you,
we will become one. You and I.”
Wondrous 