The Second Generation

A prospect of birds

in the cancelling winter,

first fables of prophets

and roses and swords,

Margaret believed in us all,

believed in our stories:

a patient astronomer

drawn by a gap in the sky

who knows from a thousand years' calculation

that the next star is coming

that all that remains

is the waiting and prayer

and the long tiring business

of notebook and telescope,

until the brightness

consumes the dark,

a brightness conceived

and cradled for centuries,

she can say this is something

I have always expected

this is the harvest of years

And then when she speaks the heavens

remember that she was the one bearing money

and flowers and trips to the city,

incandescence of fireworks

when we gathered in dozens on the summer nights

by the vanishing lake,

and most of all words

she brought us arrayed like galaxies into the forms of belief.

At home by the lake she began the story,

building word after difficult word

until in the telling the world appeared,

until in the waters the stars came down,

and all of the planets

the heavens encircle—

Chislev and Zivilyn,

Raistlin and Caramon,

Palin and Tanin,

Raoul and the little one,

the trining moons

that herald the tides of her magic,

all in the choir of her memory,

where the voice of love

moved on the water

and sang in attendance

as the story rose out

of the lake and the midnight,

the attar of roses

on the farthest shore,

and the winter reverted

to incredible spring

as it always reverts,

and the snow and the spirits

went where they wish

in the lands of belief

as the story begins again.