When bright stars rise

nightly, ghost-birds mourn—wild jungle cries

weeping for Atahuallpa slain.

Softly, softly, the winds wail

echo along the mountain sides

down through the whispering golden grain.

Only a memory now—history—to tell tale:

a pageant of gold and sweeping tides

of empire.  The old “white god”

and the young golden one

called across time and space

to friendship in that strange unlikely place

on the sun-rim of Peru.

Slowly, deeply the friendship grew

but the feathered Inca god of the Sun

was no match for the iron hand of Spain;

Atahuallpa fell, and when the deed was done

Pizarro, old, heart-broken, knew

that Spain had found its gold

but he had lost a son.

The delicate wheels of fairyland

Spin around and around

The dreamer tarries whenever

He hears that sudden sound

Of music

Blood-red cutlasses gleaming bright

In the glare of a pillaged town’s firelight.

 

Each lonely Phoenix must find new skies

From dust-destroyed days, replumaged rise.

The carnival of time universe-vast

dazzles and entices

with its brilliant stars and

multifarious mysteries

 

But what moves us most

is the carousel

 

Ah, the carousel, the carousel…

around and around we go

reaching for the elusive brass ring

 

The calliope rolls forth

mesmeric music as up

and down

and around we go

 

Up and down and around

to the song the sirens sing

and O, yes….

the possibility of that brass ring

A shadow falls

On the garden wall

There’s the strum of singing strings

And through the mist of shade and sound

A dove with folded wings

 

As in a dream

The white bird seems

An old remembered tune

A timeless melody

Perched there so still on the garden wall

A strange white feathered song

 

In shadowed light

A sweet time past

Within the heart will sometimes fall

 

Such fragile things spark memory

A wisp of sound

A haunting song

A feathered dream with folded wings

On a sequestered wall