The Watcher by the Shimmering Lake
Where solemn shadows clasp the mirror’d deep,
Lies Lac Miroitant, a tranquil place,
Where echoes stir the souls that dare to weep.
Beneath the vaulted heavens’ muted gleam,
The lake reflects not stars but silent dreams.
There stood, in quiet robe of sable hue,
The Observateur des âmes solitaires,
Whose gaze like argent threads of morning dew
Could thread the veil of man’s deep, hidden layers.
A watcher sworn to haunt this hallowed shore,
To seek the hearts that wander evermore.
His eyes, twin beacons veiled in sober gray,
Surveyed the stillness, harboring a grief;
He trod the line ‘twixt night and newborn day,
A bridge betwixt the mortal and the brief.
For in each soul he glimpsed a splintered spark,
A light entwined with darkness, close and stark.
Upon the lake a lingering mist did rise,
A ghostly shroud that veiled the mirrored calm,
As if the air itself had bled in sighs,
And time beheld the world with muted palm.
The watcher’s steps, like echoes soft and slow,
Marked out the periphery of human woe.
He mused upon the double face of man,
This fragile creature split by light and shade,
Whose heart could cradle both the fierce and wan,
Whose hand could build, yet oft its own betray’d.
“Is mortal fate but dual coalescence?
A fleeting breath of bliss, then stark absence?”
Along the shore appeared a robed young child,
Her visage pale as foam upon the tide,
Eyes wide and hollow, dreams both sweet and wild,
A mirror cracked where innocence had died.
“Oh watcher, why dost thou behold in gloom
The fragments of our ever-falling bloom?”
The watcher paused, compelled by whispered grace,
His voice a low and mournful, lilting sigh:
“To see is burden woven in this place,
Where every soul’s a glass that shatters by.
The self, divided, wrestles with the whole—
A tempest writhing in a single soul.”
She nodded slow, and from her lips did leap
A question wrought of twilight’s trembling seam:
“And yet, could not the fractured spirit keep
Its fragments bound within a single dream?
Or must the night divide what sought the light,
And rend the heart in everlasting night?”
The watcher stooped and brushed the foamy edge,
Displacing ripples round the lake’s thin spine,
His thoughts like ancient oaks upon a ledge
Bent under weight of time’s relentless line.
“Duality, alas, is mortal’s chain,
Twined round the heart by joy and deepest pain.”
Thus speaking, from within the mist there came
A specter formed of dew and pale regret,
A man whose eyes bore neither light nor flame,
But hollow voids no dawn could e’er beget.
“My soul,” he said, “once danced in golden fire,
Now drowns beneath the ash of lost desire.”
The watcher met his gaze with firm regard,
“Your shadow lurks where hope and fear entwine,
Yet still your spirit is not quite unmarred;
The frayed thread binds a fate by your design.
Tell me, lost soul, what haunts your waking breath?
Is it the fear of life, or fear of death?”
The shade replied in voice of brittle air,
“The battle rages constant, dark and deep,
Between the yearnings born of human care,
And promises that dawn will never keep.
This lake reflects the war within my breast,
A ceaseless tide that grants no man his rest.”
The watcher sighed, and shadows thickened ‘round,
His figure blurred, a ghost in twilight’s clasp,
“No peace is sent to those upon this ground
Who dare confront the self’s eternal grasp.
Yet still I linger here, though hearts may fall—
An endless witness to mankind’s dark thrall.”
Night deepened, clutching tight the silver gleam,
While stars like tears fell softly from the sky,
And by the lake, within a trembling dream,
The watcher and the specter did comply
To honor all the souls forever bound
By dual fires within the human ground.
A single leaf, encased in amber glass,
Descended slow upon the tranquil brink,
A symbol of the fleeting—meant to pass—
Yet grasped too late by hands that only think.
“What weight and wings hath mortal life betrayed,
When balance fails and fragile hope decayed?”
The watcher turned to face the solemn deep,
Whose gaze returned the ache that shadows know;
Within its depths, the souls that could not sleep,
Reflected in the endless ebb and flow.
And in this mirrored world, the watcher found—
No final solace, but despair profound.
For human hearts are vessels torn apart,
By love and loss, by joy’s ephemeral bloom,
Where light and darkness wrestle in the heart,
And none escape the ever-knowing gloom.
So here beside the lake, ‘neath mournful skies,
The watcher lingers as another dies.
