Poetry
Ernie was so disappointed.
He had applied to the Colors Realm,
Brilliance division, Backyard Flowers.
All of his credentials as a greenfaerie
pointed to him as an excellent color purveyor
for the outdoors. Not some hack for Homes.
Which is where Energetics, in their infinite wisdom, had placed him.
He was going to be a homefaerie, and he was pissed.
All they do is set tones. He read from the instructions:
Night: deep darkness, then subtle colors for night time human leaking trips.
Dawn: subtle brightblue at the tail end of night, with promise of day
singing in the molecules. (Oh, please.)
Morning: Loud light — either pink, yellow, gray or white, depending on weather.
It was all atmospheric stuff.
Just the basic ratpassing that anyone can do.
Such a waste of his incredible gifts.
He was a greenfaerie!
He’d excelled in growths and earthsongs,
in flutter nutrients for shaping blossoms,
and his feats of collaboration with birds, moths and insects
was legendary at the Academy. He was not for just
‘environmental quality of light’.
This was a crime.
But a placement is a placement, so he thumped to work every day,
flipping the lights on in the morning. Flipping them off
hard at night. It didn’t matter. It was a paycheck.
Who gives a twank.
No one in that house would notice.
Humans are so dull.
But homes had to be run with two entities;
and Energetics was having a little trouble finding Ernie’s sidelight.
Eventually she arrived, though — wings barely beating,
flat face, and no faeriesong of her own yet.
(She must have been plucked from the rejects
at the Academy.) He thought, “Perfect. Now I’m stuck
with someone who can’t even do the boring stuff.”
A few hours went by. She’d been fiddling with some
strains of warmth and cool on the afternoon’s exhales,
and Ernie noticed a palpable peace in the home.
He didn’t care one way or the other. It was fine.
Whatever. But.
Yeah.
There was such a quiet in his heart, and in this house.
He was almost sleepy with release.
She didn’t have a name yet.
I mean, she was only a sidelight...
But he was feeling magnanimous…
“Hey. I’ve got a couple extra sunbeams. You want one?”
His words unlocked something and her face flowered
into itself, more beautiful than he could ever have imagined.
Her wings grew taut with truth, glowed, fluttered.
Seeing her inmost self, he got flustered and spilled the beams.
She laughed and retrieved them on her inbreath.
Thanked him with a dazzling smile.
Suddenly he felt ashamed
of his shoddy workmanship
from the days before. He vowed
to do a masterful job that night.
Make the deepest, most wing-wrought,
soft, night time that darkness had ever slept in.
Call in the coziest subtleties for leaks trips.
(Tiny lights for that.)
And the morning! He vowed to see his greatest gifts
expressed…to see a far-reaching whisper of half-remembered
pink become sun, become now, become time to get up…
to personally escort this prayer of dawn
into its own day…
An earsplitting “POP!” rattled his faerie bones.
The sidelight had cracked open into the shape of his
long ago mentor, Glimella, long gone into the FaerieDepths now,
but standing in front of him just the same, gnarled and solid,
sober and full of reproach.
“GOOD!” she shouted, having heard his inward vow.
“See that you follow through. Did you forget everything I taught you?”
Momentarily, he had.
“FaerieLengths are endless,
and the heart of wingdom is creativity in service.
It wasn’t Energetics wasting your gifts, you shameless half-elf.
It was you. You who decided to do the least.
YOU who disrespected your wings.
You who dimmed your own light.
“Don’t you ever let me catch you wasting your gifts again,”
she hissed, “no matter where you’re placed.
Do you hear me?”
She sent her FaerieSight into his eyes.
Ernie held her Sight, took a deep breath, and then
summoned his InSelf, stretching his wings to their fullest.
His palms opened to received guidance,
and his body filled with light.
“I hear and remember,” he said.
Then, reciting from his earliest teachings,
“The air, the wings and the going
are given for being, not showing.
May our lives be sung with strengths
that sing into the FaerieLengths.”
A gentle knock on the door. Glimella disappeared.
When Ernie opened it, he saw a humble brownsfaerie,
complete with matted down hair, dull buttons,
and mud colored shoes, standing
a little away from the door,
a soft hat in his hands.
“Hi. I’m Ralph.”
A true HomesFaerie sidelight.
An experienced one, Ernie thought,
judging from his frumpy kindness
and a certain comfort with the doorway.
Ernie greeted him with a cordial wing dip as they showed
their left sides, then their rights to one another.
He was discouraged, humbled, impatient, and renewed.
His feelings wouldn’t land anywhere.
Wrestling down a habitual sense of superiority,
he had to admit that Ralph seemed clearly
more skilled in this realm.
Ralph would not only his sidelight, here.
He would be his teacher.
And it was the beginning of a legendary FaerieLength friendship.
Tina Lear founded the Long Island Dharmata Sangha, and hosts a meditation session every Monday evening. She’s started this 108-day poetry challenge. (This is Day 12) Many blessings to all living beings.
