An Eternal Week

It began with a day of faeries and angels
telling ghost stories and picking flowers among the trees
in a gentle rain…

The sunshine broke through the gray clouds
that dispersed like bubbles,
their shadows skittering across the forest floor
and down the frothy brook feeding the tributary
that eventually led down to the great rushing river,

where many of my paper boats sailed to their unhappy doom.

We had a late-winter storm, mostly ice,
that in the night air reflected the powdered moon
and gave a cold resting place to the pinpoints of light

originating from far-off stars and wandering planets.

We had a telescope borrowed from the school planetarium
that I used to focus on the rocks in the cliffs across the valley
left by the abandoned quarry.

It was a day for poetic moods,
for literature,
a day for science class studying the celestial music
that outlasts every song on my beat-up iPod.

The week wore on in an endless dream
of violins and flutes and sundry woodland instruments
that the faeries and angels brought along and played.

I gave them carrots and apples, for, though they didn't need it,

they liked food,
and they summoned little furry animals
that did not stink or bite,
as well as a few lady bugs that the bunnies chased.

I unwrapped two new books from their bubblewrap.
One was about the seasons
that took one on a journey through a beautiful relationship
that moved through its metaphorical spring, summer, and autumn, and,
such a sad ending- a last winter together before old age
carried each of them on.

The other book was immersed in the greens of Ireland,
every page dyed a different pastel.
It was a poetry picture-book, the first of its kind.
The first page featured a poem about snowball fights and snow angels,
and evil snowmen lurking about.

That was when I became distracted by the smell of burning leaves.
The leaves turned out to be on top of the first book, which fell into the campfire.
The smell gave way to the smell of burning paper.
I at least had my second book that still smelled of fresh pulp
and undiscovered stories.