ARCHDRUID

Motionless he waits at the forest's edge
beside the stream from sacred spring
just before sundown, that threshold time
when owls and nighthawks take to the wing.

He's dressed in feathers and tattered robes
held together with bindweed twine,
and a skull-crowned staff is his constant companion
that's been with him since the beginning of time.

In his blue eyes there's a kind of madness
that tells of years spent in isolation
and contemplation of the meaning of life,
in the severity of wildwood habitation.

The impressionable mind could be forgiven
for mistaking him for a woodland shade,
for his appearance is uncommon and Otherworldly
as he flits like a deer between thicket and glade.

Now emerging from a tree to deliver his prophesy:
a torrent of utterances in archaic tongue
that tells of the doctrines Christianity ousted
and the slaughtered Druids, their accomplishments unsung.

The old ways are lost now, he mournfully laments,
are replaced by technology's virtual living.
Oh what a disaster - I see it coming -
mankind's undoing through lack of thanksgiving.

The planet that sustains you must be respected,
sincere atonement is the only way.
You cannot continue just taking, taking,
or she, herself, will implode one dark day.

And I feel his warning in the fibre of my being:
in blood cell friction, Ancestral recall,
where I'm spirited back to the age before light,
to Arthur's Camelot where I'm caught up in thrall.

The Once and Future King he's tutored
in all things chivalrous and in justice true.
So why can't WE reflect this today?
I can't help thinking our reasoning's askew.

"Oh why won't you return, Lord Merlin," I plead,
"And remind us of all we've so carelessly forgotten -
like how to selflessly love and forgive,
and so heal a society that's become so rotten?"

I never left, the Archdruid replies,
It's just those cannot see me who are spiritually blind.
I dwell in the oak trees and I speak through the wind,
if you'd find me, then leave preconceptions behind.

You and the land have always been one,
but materialism has fractured your souls.
The macrocosm is still mirrored within you,
but your selfishness has filled it with myriad black holes.

Now returning to my century I clearly see
that moment in time when we planted the seed
that has grown and grown like a morbid tumour:
each soul incarnate debased by greed.

So I've made the decision to step aside
from the insanity that possesses mankind today.
I am a Druidess, my vocation is my work
with Merlin to keep annihilation at bay.