Magic

For those of you who know her, Saiph at http://waitingforthejump.blogspot.com/ just posted a bunch of mostly pencil or pen and ink drawings she's done over the years on her blog. She is immensely talented. One of them, the picture of the white and black unicorns standing at the edge of the sea, reminded me of a poem I wrote years and years ago. This is that poem.

Magic

Somewhere in the distant past

Far beyond this present day
When Knights and Princes ruled the earth
And Dragons dared to slay. 

It was then that I first met you

Where the mountains touched the sky
In a grassy meadow green and new
There you were and so was I

Yours was a form of riven white

Dressed with eyes of sunlit blue
Sparks flew up from your gilded hooves
As you danced among the dew

A shimmering fall of dazzling light

Slid along your arching form
And all the colors of the rainbow's flight
Followed in the weave of your glistening horn

I hovered there above your head

Scorched to my very soul

As power touched my wings with fright
I knew that I should go

You called to me with your alluring stance

A challenge there to stay
But we were not at all alike
As different as night and day

You were a child of the Earth
With a form of shimmering white
I was destined to roam the sky
As black as the deepest night

My flanks were streaked with midnight blue

My eyes a brilliant green
My hooves were etched a silvered hue
My legs were lithe and lean

My nostrils gleamed a blood-red haze
Bright against the endless black
Above my back my wings did stretch
Surely, I did lack

With mourning eyes I turned away
To fly the skies once more
To leave you behind for all of time
Aching; alone I would soar

With a final glance at your beautiful form

And a tear in my sorrow filled eyes
I watched the weave of your glistening horn
And whispered a heartfelt goodbye

Then sunlit blue met forest green

Your soul called out to mine
To stay that day and ever more
A challenge to my mind

To stay with you and never leave

Was what you offered me
Our forms were different it was true
But our love could ever be

For you were the last of a dying breed
As alone in the world as I
I could feel your heart deep pain
It was echoed in my cry

And then I felt my soul unwind

From the frightened place it slept
Until it stretched into the sky
And I knew what must be meant

One form of white, unearthly sight
One form of midnight hue
Together would dance on the mountaintops
Among the shimmering dew

So there in that hallowed meadow
Among the grass so green
We lived out the span of our mingled lives
Caught up in our woven dream

Then the magic left the earth

Driven out by the hand of man
All of the beauty chased away
Destroyed throughout the land

Except for that tiny meadow

At the top of the highest hill
Where a pair of shadowy figures
Dance together still

One is a shimmering rainbow

The other a patch of night
One has found earthbound play
The other has found flight.

                                  --- Karen Burch
                                       Copyright 1992