I’m having a difficult time beginning Falling, the third book in the Adalta Series. Beginning is like that time your car died, and you had to get behind and push it off the road. It’s really hard at first, but when you finally do get it rolling, the momentum builds, and pushing gets a lot easier. I’m at the push-it-up-the-hill stage now. So I spent a lot of time yesterday resurrecting the old files of my first, and unfinished, book (or series). And I found some nice surprises. One of them was the poem I wrote that will go at the beginning of the first/next book after I finish Falling. I posted it today on my POETRY page. I'll post it here, too, so you don’t even have to click away.
I also found a short story that is my version of the first of the Gilgamesh Epic. I did my dissertation on how the Gilgamesh story is depicted by contemporary writers. I didn’t always like what I saw. The reason this is relevant to the poem, Voice of the Trees, is that it contains the first mention of clear-cutting forests in history. The Epic of Gilgamesh is considered by many to be the first epic, the first story of the Hero’s Journey. I didn’t see it that way.
I’ll be publishing the short story soon on Amazon, but I’ll post it here first. Maybe next week. Today I give you the poem as a teaser for the tree book (books) I intend to write. Then I need to get back to Falling:
Voice of the Trees
The wind carries soft sounds across continent, ocean, wild tundra,
grassland, forest, city, suburb, farm,
a voice beyond human hearing.
Should we go?
Should we stay?
Root and water pulse sounds deep inside earth,
through song lines in rock, soil, coral reef, seabed,
down river and stream, wave and current singing across oceans.
Should we go?
Should we stay?
Our Guardian Humbaba is killed.
His seven terrible radiances could not save him.
His roar that brought deluges to the land could not save him.
His mouth of fire could not save him.
His deadly breath could not save him.
Rustled warnings in leaves sixty leagues away
He heard, but it did not save him.
The lion-headed Imdugud bird screamed,
threw thunder and terrible tears to flood the mountains.
The Bull of Heaven roared and pawed the ground with his terrible hoof,
and the earth shook apart buildings leagues away.
The Sacred Forest was splayed open to the axes
of the Lying Thief-King and the Betrayer.
The Betrayer Enkidu died, was forgotten, but the deed lived on.
The Lying Thief-King Gilgamesh died, was forgotten, but the deed lived on.
For six thousand years Tree sings the questions:
Should we go?
Should we stay?
If we go, they will die.
If we stay, we will die.
The terrible questions sing on wind
through branch and leaf across the earth.
The terrible questions sing in rock and river and current
through trunk and root across the earth.
Should we go?
Should we stay?
Now approaches Decision.
Now comes Decision.