Earth's Quest

“What could I have done to stop it?” I asked my father, Time. This was the day the world began to burn.

“It’s not your fault,” my father said. “Although within your home you pace, you aren’t the men you find disgraced. You long, but do not know for what you long. You ache to find the peace you sense once known, a rustling in the catacombs of your sad retreat.” 

I saw my father as heaven’s strength, but Time was running old. 

“It’s true, Father, I often lie awake in early hours, my memory’s fingers barely touch the thing. The hound slips its bounds and taunts me in a fog. Is this a premonition? Or maybe déjà vu stands just barely out of reach? I know it’s there, but when I grasp the thing firmly, only mist escapes my hand. Later, when the day arrives, I see others making way. I know they feel the same. Do they also search their memory in same early hour to find a missing grace? There is a longing in me, a sadness I can’t bear.”

“I love you, son,” my father said. “Perhaps we share the enemy who haunts your dreams. I’ll challenge this beast called Consumption and slice the heart within her chest.”

Sun, my father’s loving wife, strode the sky. “You old fool,” she said. “Consumption has a hundred spitting snakes and is an enemy you can’t overcome. She eats a bottomless feast.”

“I have to try,” my father said.

My father rode a proud bay. He was in no hurry, the horse striding valiantly, a silvered mane held high. A golden armored shield against his chest defended him from harm.

Consumption, beating black wings to full advantage, dragged my father from his gilded saddled throne. She bit him hard against his face. Soon they gripped the insanity of their worst aspirations, murder in their minds, hands clutching each opposing throat. Father broke the bond and struck the bitch Consumption with the backing of his fist. Justly spiked, the breastwork of her brow lay breached. But she clenched again my father’s throat, finding strength in blinding rage.  

At last, my father Time lay exhausted on the newly blooded bank, his face twisted in the anguish of his pain. Consumption’s eyes were veined, not white, with crimson chords which showed within she’d won. 

“Time has passed,” she declared. “I will spread my now red wings and fly to boundless genocide, postulant in their effect. I’ll laugh at bodies stacked and bloated, endless under ashen clouds.” With shadowed wings she leaped and beat the sky.

I held my father where he lay. “Where do I go from here?” I asked. 

He held me close with still loved arms. “Your desire for men’s better nature burns in a sealed jar. And now your mind clamors against a feeding flesh, which eats upon your soul. Solace won’t hide tears the sun can’t dry. You must go to your sister, Wind. Her strength may blow away the hidden veil of what you seek,” and Time passed.

It was not his eyes which held mine. There was no clenched condemnation, nor was there the strike of anger against my young man’s naivety. But shame it was that struck that day, and so I tossed away hypocrisy, a betrayal to my broken heart, to muddy banks. I resolved to find my sister, Wind. 

With Time gone, I rode his horse, and when I thought I’d ride no more, I came to find myself within the squandered hills. Was there within these sweeping mounds belief? I hoped to find redemption where it lived, a mine which wildly crouched within a canyon’s crevice. Once found, I dug with coaled hands to find the thing for which I longed within the entrails of its depths. But no, seeking rectitude on the deepest pits within those caves, blind to the blackness of the tunnel’s condemnation, I found nothing, only emptiness, speaking hollow, without hope.

But as my father hoped, I felt my sister Wind, a whispered graze which cooled my cheek (or rather she found me I think). Finding me disconsolate, she knelt down against my side. For a time, we lay in symphony. 

I asked her, “What was my justification, my error in the mines? I failed to find what I longed for. I’m more tired than ever. Was I in fear, absorbed in my own shallowed ignorance, or maybe I was safely careless?”

Wind said, “It was none of those things. Do you remember a family long ago begging men to help them? They had cracked hands, their dry clayed skin so written in a season’s draught. Do you remember?”

“What could I do?” I asked, uneasy in my nervousness. “You judge me too harshly.”

“I don’t judge you at all. I judge men. Men’s deaf hands held their sculls, clenched out silent begging stomachs. Did they, from silken fingers, drop cherished coins of kindness on white earth? Do you remember a young man, whose eyes shined pride, charging on horseback. His warrior’s chest was taunt with muscle, his horse the dust of vengeful sky. He thundered in the brightest sun and died.”

“It’s true men killed that warrior, but must it always be that way?"

My sister, Wind, rose and thrust against my stance a driving rain, howling admonishments. “The warrior’s eyes shadowed in the hate of men. Yes, his blood was the color of all men’s blood, but they still left his body unburied, a rotting carrion. They did not care and stood by unchanged in the rising heat, a stench on sour earth.”

“It’s not too late,” I said.

“But it is,” Wind said. “Time has died. These men will now find out what we wind, and sun, and rain can do.”

“But some men are good at heart,” I declared. 

Unheeding, Wind twisted a bitter lip. “You’re still a boy. Go find your mother, Sun. You disgust me in your forbearance in sight of agonies by men.” With these words, Wind rose and begged the sky to join her, confident in her heights of protection, on wings of undue prejudice. But with their quitting, I sensed no change from slaughter re-commenced, a genocidal orgasm crying death, and bodies bloating in the field.  

I turned away to seek my mother, Sun.

Had I longed for remedy as a fool, an idiot jester? Having little recourse, and to live not wanting to, I climbed my mount again to seek a banishment of pain, the soured pit within my chest I knew not from. If only my mother could give me favor, to lead me where I longed. And so, with stalwart back upon my father’s horse, I galloped in a forthright pace to meet my mother on the mountain of despair.

I rode through far-flung hills, relentless in their battlements against me, and seeming endless until I came to a valley filled with springs of salient screams, women drinking deep a lecherous water, thousands gagging desperation. Standing men, resolved in their dishonor, lashed the woman’s backs, their flesh now spoiled red, spilled, then pooled in rivers fed with flowing horror. The men wore lucred skirts and carried bellies false-glamoured in their gluttony. While they whipped, they gorged on froth-drooled flesh-meat, greed their only God. In wary stead, they fixed upon their own eyes, plucked them from their head and cast them to the woman, then stamped their blinded sight with heels of edacity. I did nothing, only reeled revulsion, passing those in bondage, their chains rubbed raw on ankles boned and bound by iron chains of broken chastity.  

Yes, I did nothing. The yoke of labor bore tight on the necks of these who served these master men. Was innocence chained in dens of inequity? Was hope beaten and strapped to white horses in sunsets, never to return? What woman speaks better for all women than men’s whispered confidences, whose advisement is to lie down under endurant bondage, a bondage lying cold in a treeless valley called resignation. Was this a woman’s destiny? To choose life while obeying the calls of enjoinment, with no more solace than tears in a bed of straw? 

And so, riding on, would my shame be bottomless? 

The mounds grew into mountains, the mountains into madness. My abstract thoughts were real and bit. But I climbed to seek my mother, Sun. And when the cliffs grinned no, with my fingers clawed on spined granite, when iced tongues licked me with their sharp pricked ill intent, my frigid sister, Wind, laughed, and threw unseen frozen torment in my face. No spirit left, I waited huddled down, my body firmed and frozen blackened on a ridge. My quest to find the source of longing lost, I crawled behind some wayward rocks to pass. And there resolved, I only prayed for endless night, a simple disappearance from this life. 

Does curiosity die a lasting gasp? I smiled myself a bitter breath. Far below, with one last look, a path struck clear. For there, below, were steps I had not taken, but only spied them now as I near passed. It was clear my path was one forsaken, the one false witness only shown by shining from above.

Sun, my mother, close at hand, climbed down from high with warmth of her embrace. “Hail well, my smaller son, hail well. The climb has no true way, and truth’s been lost as you can see now far below.”

I held my mother close and soon I warmed.

I pointed out the wayward trail below. “What choice was made by men who chose that path? The one where truth becomes an orphaned son, a boy who’s passed, denied a love he longed.”

 My mother lay back against the stone, thought hard about the question I had asked. “Truth has lost another’s reason. All men seek a truth to know, but now some speak a truth not known. Some now make a lie their own. I don’t have the answer for you. Maybe your brother, Moon, will know your way.”

 “Can you take me down?” I asked. “Time has passed.”

My brother Moon beckoned in the night, his face a welcome ghost. “Our mother has told me you need aid.”

“Moon, you’re the last. I fear I’m done. Our father Time has died his day, genocide is carried on. Consumption lives and rides Glutony as her guide. And sister Wind has flown away, Oppression lives another day. Our mother, Sun, shines clear paths, but only lies now mark the way.”

“So you’ve learned nothing,” said the Moon. “But why is that your problem? Be honest, I’m your brother in the sky.”

“It’s not my problem,” I said. “I only seek the answer; I’m not man. And yet the early hours still haunt my bed; I still don’t know the thing for which I long.”

“Come with me,” said the Moon, and formed a crescent seat. “I’ll take you back.”

And so we crossed the sky above, brothers he and I. He lifted me and soon we stood where flags still stand today. 

“Time is lost,” my brother said. We both stared off to space. “Can you see the brightest hope, the thing for which you long?”

And standing there in crater’s past, it struck my memory. Long forgot, and just right here, I pictured visions far away and footprints in the dust. It came back then, my brother Moon, had hailed well men who’d flown their craft this way. They’d stood as I to marvel wide at some blue horizoned marble. And now with tears that washed my face, as Earth I was the story. I knew where peace can now be found, for what I longed was mankind’s love, and life in all its glory.”