Footprints of the Puppet
Strings broken and dangling,
Painstakingly, tenderly gathered.
Tracing through fingers, slim and calloused.
Deftly, those same fingers fly,
Weaving a web, intricate and strong.
A cloak of strength, a net to break a fall.
From those strings broken and dangling,
Strings that once held the puppet,
Bound and strangling.
Free of strings and stings,
Of words, weighted and barbed.
One step, cautious and teetering.
Unaided and reaching, a wobbling fall.
The ground rushing up to kiss her chin.
Iron paints her tongue, gravel dots her hands.
Fire lights her eyes, not an easy journey,
Making a path, forging through the dark.
Learning to walk, discovering one's own wings.
With a cloak woven of the pasts broken strings,
A heart echoing in her ears,
The puppet pushes up from the stones,
Dashes away the salty, stinging tears.
Gravel tore her hands, iron taints her tongue,
But for this fallen puppet, her journey has only just begun.
Another step, head held high,
There is no stopping, her soul crying, begging her to try.
Wobble and teeter, arms flailing about.
Down again, stones biting, tear and scrapes stinging.
The puppet, handprints become footprints, pressed into the sand,
As the rain begins to fall, clouds pressing into a scowl.
Upon a shore strewn with sea glass formed of broken dreams.
She takes another unsure step, eyes upon the sky.
The weeping virga brushes a cheek, still damp from a recent cry.
This is the cold dark place, where it all began, when she fell,
Those damned strings cut and dangling.
Alone, but for the song of sea, the whisper of an owl.
The storm hides the stars, her compass on this course.
So the puppet, patient and learning, folds slim, cold hands.
Even here in this cold dark place,
A gentle light is found, traced by lantern's breath,
Eyes alight with hope, an inner bright fire,
The reflection of a far off star, shining in the puppet's face.
The edges, sharp and cutting, of broken glass...
These treasures of the sea, are softened by the waves, the raw stripped away.
Upon the cobalt sea, floats of glass, blown and bound by net,
Shimmer in the night as the clouds break, the breeze freshening.
And from the shadows comes the puppet, clad in a mantle of trembling, coltish grace.
Her feet beneath her, moonshadows stretch ahead...
Reaching out beyond the end of sight, rounding an unseen bend.
There is a softness to the breeze, a touch hovers in the air.
The merest hush of sound ruffles her windswept hair.
This is no goblin, no ghoul from the dark.
It is a verse, the song of a lark,
Possessed of a broken wing, she who is learning to pray.
A hand, torn and hesitant, reaches out...
Plucking the wayfarer from the shore near a faery, who lies dead.
The fallen litter the shore as the puppet passes by.
Floats and sea glass reflecting constellations,
Light a course amidst the water, sand and stone.
The remnants of a battle, a tale carved into the echo of a bone.
The waves, of tide and time, have washed away the gore.
But she, this puppet, knows the lores of those that came before.
Of the Last. Of the Lost. Of the Legends, gone.
She, this puppet, though she knows it not, is a Keeper,
Of a most curious place, pathways and byways, a Keeper of the Strangeways.
This puppet, a dreamer, once fallen on her face,
Glances back at her footprints in the sand.
She has come long way, often in the dark without a star.
The lark, pressed close, singing upon this foreign shore.
A pathway along a desolate stretch now shows the way.
But for this Keeper, her journey on this beach is done.
The net woven from those tattered strings from beneath her cloak is drawn.
The moon now sinks, swallowed by the sea, patient, still as stone she waits...
Until the Phoenix, a comet in the sky, comes streaking into the net, whisking the Keeper to a far flung place.
'Of wings and words and dancing milkweed seeds...'
