The Whispering Thicket: An Errant’s Tale
Where ancient oaks in solemn congress stand,
There lies a path forsaken unto Death—
A sentier perdu in the shadowed land.
No mortal foot nor whisper crossed its span,
Save one sole Errant, drifting nameless soul,
Who grasped at fleeting threads from Age’s ban,
In search of that elusive, fractured whole.
His mind, a restless sea of twilight fog,
Did wrestle phantoms steeling memories’ guise;
Each leaf, each step, a whispered cryptic cog,
Within the labyrinth of his murky skies.
No kin nor voice did echo to his name,
No mirror’d face to anchor drifting thought;
A figure traced in shadows clothed with shame,
By past unclaimed and future still uncaught.
“Oh, hostile woods,” he breathed, “where colors fade,
Thy solemn boughs conceal what truths I seek;
My soul, a vessel lost and unallayed,
Seeks vestiges buried ‘neath thy rotting creek.”
Yet still the forest murmured, deep and low:
“The man who walks without the name he owns,
Is as the river lost to where it’s run—
A silent verse on stones untouched, unknown.”
The canopy broke—speckled rays through lace—
And on the mossy floor, a relic lay,
A worn, cracked locket clasped with tender grace,
Its silver dulled by time’s forgetful sway.
With trembling hands, the Errant pried it near,
The cool metal kissed by dusk’s fading gleam;
Within, a faded portrait, faint and sere,
Cast shadows thick as myths within a dream.
He spoke aloud, a whisper to the void,
“Am I but specter borne of this green breast?
Or child exiled by fate’s caprice annoyed,
Whose roots were torn before the earth’s bequest?”
No answer stirred but leaves that sighed and shook,
And wind that sang a dirge through hollow bark;
His heart, a cage wherein his doubts awoke—
A lantern flickering in endless dark.
A rustle, sudden—eyes like molten gold
Peered through the thicket, steady, deep, and still;
A stag of ancient myths and stories told,
Did stand before him, silent, proud, and chill.
Its antlers crowned with ivy’s fragile grace,
Its breath a mist upon the chilled air’s skin,
As if from time’s own cradle it took place,
To guide the lost man buried deep within.
“Why do you wander, seeker of the shade?
What yearning carves your footsteps from the dawn?”
The Errant’s voice, a fragile thread betrayed,
Unwound the anguish of the days foregone:
“I walk to find the pulse that once was mine,
The heritage erased by veil and mist;
To claim the fragments scattered, so divine,
Myself amid the tempest and the tryst.”
The stag inclined its head, a solemn nod,
Then turned and beckoned with its solemn eye;
A path unseen beneath the emerald shroud,
Where whispered secrets in the petrichor lie.
He followed where the fae-like creature strode,
Between the trunks gnarled like time’s own grasp;
Each step uncoiled a tale yet untold—
A living riddle clasped in Nature’s clasp.
Along the way, the Errant’s thoughts did stir—
A monologue etched by memory’s art:
“Is identity but echo and murmur,
A specter’s dance within the hollow heart?
Or is the self a vessel forged in night,
Where shadows mingle with the fledgling dawn?
Am I but leaf that drifts from storm to light—
A fleeting mark, erased ere life’s bonds spawn?”
Beneath a weeping willow’s drooping veil,
He found a stream with waters crystal clear;
Its surface bore no face, no self to hail,
Yet whispered truths he longed to hold so dear.
He knelt and gazed—the ripples sang his plight,
A fleeting visage drowned in mirrored glass;
He reached to touch the fading frame of light,
But Time, like water, slipped beyond his grasp.
Then words rose in the hush of sinking day,
Soft as the velvet dark caressing leaves:
“In losing root, may man yet find his way,
Through tangled boughs where memory conceives.
For no man’s breast holds all the truths he seeks;
Identity—like rivers—is reborn
When lost amidst the forest’s cryptic creeks,
And found anew beneath the break of morn.”
The Errant smiled, a tear’s unspoken gleam,
As shadows deepened in the gloaming’s breath;
His path still veiled amidst the woodland dream,
Yet hope emerged to temper silent death.
An open trail, winding without an end—
Between the known and those forgotten lands;
His story writ where earth and ether blend,
Awaiting touch of willing, weary hands.
Thus lingers still the sentier perdu,
Where man and myth entwine in endless dance;
A tale unfinished, whispered faint and true,
Inviting hearts to wander and to chance.
For identity is never fully claimed—
A shadow cast by flames both bright and dim;
A quest eternal, neither lost nor named,
Forever marked, yet never wholly him.
