The Valley of the Shadow: A Dream

Here again, the hot red rock towers above me.

massive columns of sandstone seemingly leaning,

ready to crush me.

.

To dare to climb would be suicide for surely

the rocks would break off in my hands and

falling backwards, I would plummet 

to the canyon floor, and the birds would pick me apart-

they would redress me until my clean, white bones shone

and joined the old dry bones scattered around,

those bones of men and beasts, all succumbed

to the terrible Valley.

.

I walk the middle path, the dry river bed.

Here the stone giants can not reach me.

The only men here are bones, and even in life these

men had been little more than shells-hollow, empty shells-

from long years spent in canyons of regret, 

this red, red valley of certain death.

.

I am becoming a shell here, too.  I am like a guitar-

only skin and ribs, and empty inside.

Like a guitar, I can not make my own song, 

but simply echo the notes played over me.

The A minor is strummed-a pointed question.

D minor answers dolorously.

I look left, and a wild cat is lying on a low crag, 

with his tongue dried like a tobacco leaf, and stuck

to his thin lips.  

A grandfather grasshopper drags himself along

in front of the cat, but the creature pays the old insect

no mind.  

He just stares, removed from it all.

Finally I hear E major, and it swells, along with my heart.

Now there is a little fat to chew, some marrow to draw from the bones,

but it quickly bows, and the piece is finished,

ending on A minor.

There is no resolution, only surrender to the Shadow.

It is a land without hope, and the walls of this shadow land

echo the last note.