The year moves in cycles, a wheel with eight spokes, eight standing stones dividing spring from summer, winter from fall. An eight-act play in which we accept the roles for which we read early on and hope our lines make sense, the hero and her fool.
Today is Lughnasa, the watershed cleaving summer and the fall. The first day of the harvest whose bountiful berries preserve a taste of sunshine beyond the bitterness of snow. The last of idle somnolence as the dream of midsummer fades like the faeries whose whispered conversations murmur beneath the rain.
Sprites and water nymphs frolic in the jeweled world of a sun shower encased by tiny beads of glass, fragile. Like iridescent dragonflies, they hover and flit, dodging raindrops above the misty road whose destination they dare not reveal. Their pearls blossom in a grove atop the jungle of grass, casting starburst reflections off a spider's radiant loom as she weaves in omens to snare the Norns. Raindrops echo across the rippled surface of a pond casting uneven images like a hand mirror to the wyrd. As sunlight sparkles upon that dappled water, an empty hammock beckons in a cool but gentle breeze, a foreshadowing the fall.
One year ago we strained to read the oracles thrown at our hero's feet as her long battle waned toward victory. Her sword and banner have been returned to the stones above the watchtower mantle, polished yet stained by weather. Outside the vines have grown thick and heavy with midnight fruit, concealing her former encampment, softening the scars of her erstwhile war as the gloaming slants across the hazy forest path shrouded beyond the wall.© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III
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