An Epic Journey Poem by Martin Moore

AN EPIC JOURNEY

At daybreak on a cold November morning
I take my first tentative steps.
The ground is hard underfoot.
Each footstep reverberates throughout the silent forest
Reflecting my ominous impact
On the mute meandering path
Through this sylvan sanctum.
Over my shoulder I glimpse
The bristling back of the repellent brute.
Ahead, the unfamiliar, the future
And above the omnipresent demons
Awaiting failure with their ghostly grimoire.
The satisfying crunch of beech nuts beneath my uncertain feet
Gives utterance to the anguish.
My inner strength is garnered
Fortitude enables me to circumvent my particular nadir.
Advancing in the face of adversity
Exhaustion soon overcomes.
I rest by a small brook
Its crystal clear waters disappear beneath my mud soaked feet
To emerge on the other side anew.
It flows freely and abundantly.
Bound to its earthly course yet in perpetual momentum.
Distrait for but an instant
I suddenly perceive
The bloodshot eyes of the Ilex
Patiently watching over me
Like bright beacons through the timber throng.
Winter decay is abundant
The deciduous cull and turbulent tempest
Have plucked the branches bare.
I deviate, distracted
Beguiled by nature
I follow unquestionably to visit
The arresting aspect in the middle distance.
I sit beneath an ancient oak
A storm severed limb cradled in its crooked arms
Held aloft in sacrificial pose.
On its rugged bark and boughs
A century of survival is etched in graven imagery.
I can feel its senescent energy vibrate through my core
An interspersion of living entities.
It, the epitome of patience and humility
And I a tortured soul, seeking solace
Prostrate at its oaken alter.
A frosty winter breath caresses its cadaverous canopy
And in its silent wake
A final drizzle of dead lobed leaves
Descend silently to a russet earth.
From this copper carpet its humble subjects
Pay tribute in ashen form.
A dramatic scene now unveiled
As the winter chill has divested the stage of its showy summer drapes
And laid bare the players.
A motionless mime
A static performance
Given momentum only by the vagary's of the wind.
The thespian's tall slender forms
Deprived of girth by sibling rivalry.
Some contorted in a contrived submissive bow
Windblown to subjection
Loyally attend this Royal Oak and its dryads
Yet suck the bounty from its rotting leaves.
I can sense their hunger
Their roots clawing at the heat emanating from my tired limbs
I am aware of my feet anchored in the moist earth
Intertwined with twig and leaf
I stare in abeyance, rooted to the spot.
My reverie abruptly ends
The cold and wet entering the very marrow of my bones.
I move on reluctantly from my conceived security
Into the unknown abyss.
I am frozen with fear
The black dog snapping eternally at my heels
Threatening to drag me back
To the dark recesses of the woods
Where no sunlight warms
The layers of pine needles that lie in latent decomposition
A place where the prehistoric fruiting bodies of fungi
And ancient mosses and lichens thrive
Clinging to grey granite.
A spiritless chasm, Cliodhna's cavern
A pantheon to those darker deities
Whose disconsolate images effectuate an intellectual paralysis.
Saturating the mind,
Infusing the grey matter with its black poison
Leaving me, afraid to ideate
A world above An Madra Dubh
This canine cur
The precursor of my delusory pleasure
A harbinger hailing my own hamartia.
I struggle forward along the season's poudrin path
Side stepping obstacles and banishing self- doubt
With my genial hosts facile hand
To ease this wearisome joust.
The lifeless, leafless trees lead me along
They transude tranquillity in these harsh environs.
I am fettered by their beauty
And humbled by their strength.
In this humility I forge ahead
Deeper into this forest of truth.
By a small clearing
I come to rest by a lone spindle bush
The reddish-purple hue of its leaves
Still clinging to its wispy wintry branches
Its pink autumn fruits now agape
Revealing the bright orange seeds inside
A sanguine sight in the Cimmerian gloom
Helps to lift the melancholy mood
The bleakness of mind and manner
It acts as a passage through a gothic gateway
Into the light and beyond.
I stare at it transfixed
Momentarily spellbound in its hypnotic grip
Until a gelid water droplet renders me revenant.
My epic journey continues
Along the frigid rutted track
The frozen footprints of many
Preserved in time until the thaw
The varied patterns of heavy soles
Cast in clay and ice.
I come upon the colossal corpse of a sweet chestnut
Lying prone and powerless on the ground
Its lofty ideals shattered.
Its body, hewn and sliced
Shoved unceremoniously to either side of the descending pathway.
Its sweet sawdust blood
Spilled and mingled with its rotting leaves and spiny castanets
Exudes a deathly odour.
I amble past this arboreal atrocity
And leave its progeny to battle for the vacant lot.
I see faint dog tracks ahead and pray for none behind
My forensic eye surveys the site
A coagulum of blood and feathers
Betrays a murderous sparrow hawk.
I turn a corner and face southwards
I strive forward
Away from the habitual
The timeworn observance of those pitiful patterns
Paying homage to Dionysus
Leading to confusion and ambiguity.
A line of larch stands like praetorian guards
Watching over me
Containing the evergreen hoards
Preventing them from spilling onto the enlightened way.
A fog of inculpability descends
Slowly at first, then envelops me entirely
Blanketing my surroundings
Cutting off my access
For a moment I am blinded.
It disperses, vanishes over the tree top horizon
The cold air clears and I can see.
A new course is revealed
Devoid of all footfall.
I am a pioneer, a colonist
The first to thread this path
To plough this lone furrow.
I am left to contemplate my conception
My intimate rebirth
My terminus a quo.
No longer can I advance by retreating
The heart cannot conquer by hiding.
Darkness thrives where ambivalence reigns.
In searching the cobwebbed caverns of the soul
The quest and yearning for inner peace
For personal summum bonum
Can only scratch the surface through the smog
Until I reach the lodge by the grand gates.
There I can lay down my burden, my emotional baggage
By its tall rectangular pillars
And ease my aching shoulders.
The relief is palpable.
I hear birdsong from deep within my conifer confessors.
I turn to thank them and see for the first time
Their heads bowed from the weight of infinite knowledge
And the first flurry of winter snow.
An uncorrupted carpet of serenity, symbol of purity
White washing the last chapter of my journey
Burying my struggle
Concealing it beneath the surface
Consigning it to history, to the subconscious mind
Finally free of its bonds
I throw off the trammels of the past and look to the future
Overcoming the impasse I exult in closure.
As the morning clears so does my clouded mind
Beneath the rising sun I am homeward bound.