From Below the Cloud
Here, on this cloud. No better place to be, than here, on this cloud. To look down below and see my love, who once loved me, walking along the green hills with another man’s hand in hers. But saying another man would be incorrect. For here, laying on this cloud and speaking, is a being of half-man half-animal. My legs replaced with a beast’s hind legs of burnt umber colored fur and hooves clicking instead of calm flat feet. And when my hands brush the delicate waves of the hair on my head, the curled horns bar my fingers. I am strong, that is true, but inside I am as soft as the faint song heard from a Blue Bird singing far within the spring-morning mountains. And the only way the people hear this song, is not when they look at me or hear me speak like an ordinary man speaks, it is when I play. When I press my lips gently against the wooden flute and pour all that is within me out through the wooden holes, then, out comes my song. A sad song. A song of loneliness and of love never felt and given, and acceptance never received. And when the people are in town and can hear this song playing in the distance, they follow it. Follow it through the village, across the bridge and up towards the green hills. And then they see me. Me, playing this song. And no matter how sweet the song is and how far they have traveled to be close to it, when they see me all the curiosity and delight on their faces disappear and they hurriedly walk away, leaving me alone to play my sad song.