PROLOGUE: the World Askew
Contrary to my typical aversion to scutwork and related habit of avoidance and omissions,
I greeted the newly forged day steeped in fervently professed plans and burning ambitions.
Promptly making a discontinuity of the back door, I stepped out resolute and firmly rooted;
Boldly launching into the invigorating rawness of the morning dew.
All the while I fisted a piping hot cup of that ubiquitous morning brew,
And mentally listed the concise and fitting order of the many things I had set out to do.
Muttering softly said I “Should the world around me crumble
And cities burn with elemental fire, so let their revolutions rumble.
Till I see their indignant faces and I hear their unhinged roar,
And they have found me out, and broken down my front door,
No care have I if the streets be heaped with innumerable dead,
There are no two ways around it; I’ve got to clean out this shed.”
SCENE 1: Something abrew in the Toolshed
My slippered footfalls clapped on the path, like a slow muffled applause.
Nearing the low gabled structure unawares something gave me pause.
Spying through a filmy pane of glass in the toolshed door,
I saw a ‘thing’ stacked atop some boards, which I now had to explore.
I quickened my pace, fumbled for pocketed keys with inordinate haste,
Still peering through the smoky glass at that ‘thing’ that seemed out of place.
With the door thrown open, dust and cobwebs batted out of the way,
Now only the engulfing mustiness of the interior held me at bay.
Reaching through the murk, eyes slowly adjusting and guiding my hand,
A nascent acumen budded whereon I suddenly blurted out: ‘Well I’ll be damned!’
I pulled a rusty scabbard, out of darkness into light from out the dusty shed
Wondering how it got there; things began to spin around in my head.
SCENE II: The Method and the Madness
Noticing the blade was inextricably wedged into the battered sheath,
I debated on methodologies to free the steel, and finally set my teeth,
“It will take some well-chose persuasion to separate the parts, methinks,
And being a man commanding judicious agency as opposed to mad instincts,
In the vise the scabbard must go, soon thereafter we’ll see what’s what,
The mallet duly accorded with a few soft blows should loosen it right up.”
In the vise the scabbard went; I retrieved the mallet from its hook,
Lined up what seemed a favorable angle, and gave the target one last look.
With a sharp expelling of the breath, I launched the mallet for the decisive blow,
When some fiendish interference abruptly manifested from a hellish pit below.
From my eye’s periphery, I saw the handle on the vise spin of its own accord,
And release to hapless gravity its appointed custody of the mysterious sword.
The scabbard clattered discordantly against the bench and fell off to my right,
The mallet unabated went by the absent mark, swung up and took out the hanging light.
I stood diffidently cogitating, reviewing my narrow grasp of Newtonian mechanics;
Conversely, had my toolshed possibly transformed into a metaphysical bag of tricks?
Was some form of potential energy stored and suddenly released to cause the spin?
I settled down on a stack under the busted light like ‘The Thinker’, hand to chin.
SCENE III: Worlds colliding in the Toolshed
Frozen in silent contemplation, piecing the strange series of events together,
My suspicions shifted steadily from vise to blade as the key in the matter.
“What kind of sheath is this?” I fumed out loud with a squinting eye,
And reached out forcefully to take hold of the scabbard a second time.
As soon as I had it in my grip, and righted up a bit, a jolt ran up my arm.
The atmosphere suddenly turned plasmatic; molecules around me began to swarm,
The walls were swimming refractively; the air pulsed with buzzing electricity,
I found myself centered disagreeably in the middle of a strange synchronicity.
“What fresh hell is this”, I sullenly opined, for I had no rational way to tell
Was I peering into another world, or back into this one from some spectral cell.
I flipped back and forth, in and out of alternate worlds a number of times,
As the anomaly faded, I saw my watch running backwards until it stopped at 8:49.
SCENE IV: Am I losing my grip?
Just as quickly as the aberration appeared, it rolled up and disappeared into a gash.
The toolshed went quiet except for a swirling vortex of dust sending out a flash.
Then, from the ether, or else, from a deep fold of gray matter, I heard a voice exclaim:
“Brave Knight! To thee this charge is given, stand now your ground and proclaim!
Hast thou mind this blade to noble purpose use, ere I loose my grip?
Speak now truly thine forthright intent before the deadly blade I let slip.”
Perplexed, I muttered the words “to noble purpose use”, albeit somewhat absently,
Nevertheless, it must have been enough to set the next thing in motion quite insistently.
Almost immediately the mystifying scabbard began to fizzle and vibrate in my grasp,
Startled, I said aloud “What now, how long is this confounded affair going to last?”
Increasingly the entire assembly rattled and began to hum like an atomic clock,
Thereafter another jolt followed by the sound curiously like tumblers in a lock.
Unexpectedly, the discordant cacophony and raucous ratcheting clangor stopped.
Then, after one last click, I glanced at the hilt and noticed that the blade had popped.
There at long last, by some mystical agency about an inch of the blade was revealed,
In sharp contrast to the rusty beaten scabbard, it shined with the gleam of blue steel.
I drew the blade out of the sheath altogether, as I did, it flashed with furious light,
With a wide arching sweep, the fire shimmering off the blade set the birds to flight.
SCENE V: Long day’s journey into Knight
Taking a wide stance, raising the sword I extended the blade out fully at arm’s length,
Sighted down the fuller to the left and the right, my arm pulsing with an ancient strength.
I tossed the sword lightly back and forth between my hands testing it for balance and fit,
Whether or not I had any understanding of what I was doing, I seriously doubt it.
But there was an undeniable feeling and sudden confidence welling up on the inside,
An inner strength and sense of purpose in handling the weapon, which could not be denied.
Then, I saw invaders lurking on my lawn and charged out at them with the sword in a rush.
Swinging at their gangly heads, I dug into them deeply, until they all were flushed.
After the dandelions, I took after a mess of herbaceous invaders camped out on the green,
When the hedge reared itself up like an unruly mob, until I trimmed it up square and clean.
The sword had proven itself mighty handy in shaping up the riotous chaos of the yard,
Seeking other errands, I pounded some nails back in the pickets with the pommel of the sword.
SCENE VI: Shadow of forgotten ancestors
Back at the shed I reunited the blade with the scabbard and tossed it onto the bench.
Before I could turn around, the door slammed with such force, the entire structure wrenched.
A voice shook the air: “Fool, sit you down, judgement upon you has been placed,
The blade retrieved tells the tale, and such a one not of honor, but of disgrace.
Am I to believe this is the purpose for which I have set the blade loose?
Have you no regard for right conduct, for honor; have you no notion of proper use?
Is it true, that instead of evildoers, it is to shrubberies you’ve laid waste?
Are these your exploits of foolery owing to lunacy, or worse, to some mockery traced?
Are you in such a debased state or at the mercy of a spirit so downtrodden
That you wield this noble weapon no better than to dig up spuds in the back garden?
I ask you now, how is it that you have such little understanding of the demands of life,
Than to use such an instrument with any other purpose in mind than to take up a fight?”
“Who are you spirit”, I asked staring at the scabbard as if the voice emanated from there.
“Set your gaze up here, dullard, and behold the spectre of your forebears.”
Looking up I made out a shadowy figure floating free near the rafters,
An apparition of such fierceness, never have I beheld before nor do I wish to here-after.
Said the spectre: “Are you so satisfied to do nothing more than putter about in your shed,
While the whole world is burning and about to crash around your head?”
In reciprocation said I:“What good is one sword or one man against such a sea of trouble?
Should I strike against the tide, what would happen other than it strike back double?”
“That be your answer? Have you never heard it said or considered that “life is duty?”
Know you not, your ancestors stood one against a thousand, making the price of victory costly?
And left histories behind and matchless legacies for generations to look back on in awe?
Have you no idea of the heritage left you as a source of strength from which to draw?
SCENE VII: Call of the Ancestors
Can you breathe the air,
And suffer not a care
For the stench of the times
That perpetually festers there?
Have you a heart in your chest
And yet can you resist,
While it beats like a drum of war,
And so ignore its echoing in your breast?
Do you have blood in your veins
And yet can you refrain,
Though it boil over with injustice,
Will you not shake off the chains?
Do you have eyes to see
The harsh engulfing reality?
Will you leave your part undone
Before you enter eternity?
Are you in your own image made?
Or is the hallmark of the Creator
On your soul engraved?
Will you not rise and meet the test,
Or decide to let the calling fade?
Do you not know
the soul is a sword
In the body sheathed?
Until released by the Word,
Remains locked in the deep.
Unless it be pulled free
And revealed in the light,
In you is no virtuous fight.
Claim your destiny
And learn to rightly divide
Between Truth
and the damnable lie;
Let not darkness rule the day,
What has no life,
That cut away!
Stand, and others
will stand with you,
Remember this:
Only in the Stand
Is there hope of virtue.
SCENE VIII: Epilogue The sting of things
I sat there stunned to the core, filled with unimaginable shame, just staring at the ground,
When I finally ventured to look up, the sword and scabbard was nowhere to be found.
Perhaps it was all a dream I told myself, although the sting of admonitions still lingered.
I gazed down upon the fragments of the shattered bulb at my feet that glimmered
In a narrow shaft of light that found its way through the window laying down a bright wedge.
I was still in denial when I stepped out of the shed until I spotted the freshly trimmed hedge.
NOTE: Scene Titles are not intended to be recited aloud.