Idle Thoughts While the Rain Falls

On the Earth but not of it, Bardelys is taken by dreams

Bardelys sat under the dwarf apple tree and watched the cold white raindrops fall. He was pleased to see the mounds of hay and weeds darkening under the trees. He hoped the rain was soaking through the mulch into the earth below and that the worms would rise to the bait.

Bardelys had no faith in his husbandry. Although in Bardelys’ philosophy all men should be farmers just as they should be lovers and citizens and eaters and singers, he knew only too well that all mens’ talents were not equal. And Bardelys celebrated the earth and the things of Earth, and he knew (or felt) far away from her. His own home lay far away in the Lost Land, Eartherea.

Eartherea, Eartherea! How Bardelys longed for Her! He had dreamt of Her again in the Gray Hour that comes with the Gray Wolf in the Night’s last gasp. She had appeared before him in the rich gown of a Renaissance madonna, with strands of pearls in Her pale golden hair. She had smiled and nodded and left him trembling. Cesare Borgia himself would have been shaken at the apparition. Bardelys had sat on the edge of the hammock that served him for a summer bed, his breath rasping in his throat before he could lift his old clay up and draw on his field-work garb. The shirt had been still damp from yesterday’s toil.

The dawn that day had been bright, but before Bardelys had done with his first round of mowing a black-gray cloud crawled across the sky so low Bardelys could have thrown a hard green apple into it. The first of the showers held back at least long enough for him to end the dawn round of his chores.

Now the rain fell hard. The air was cold. White tears of lightning cut the clouds. The old maples showed the gleaming undersides of their leaves, like coy maidens in breathless bawdiness. And Bardelys sighed, and thought on Summer’s end, and wondered how ever could he hope to complete all that he had to do before the Earth died again into sleep.

And he thought, How much easier it all would be, if only the weeds were edible and filling, and maple boughs like potatoes!

On Eartherea they would be. But She only laughed at his foolish dreams. And the tireless Work tapped His foot and waited.

(Composed on pen-top Sunday 27 July 2008)