Once Of Mind…
There once did live
This tree now of charred tenacity,
Imbued with a fantasized statue of strength,
Steadfastly stationed atop its roots.
There once did live
My fortressed escape
With hammered sticks as steps,
Giving flight from reality,
My stronghold to the mythical sky.
This tree that housed so many dreams,
Now but a burned-out cavity,
Remains of a remembered life,
Entombed by climbing vines,
Flowered embracing round its trunk
Reaching up left and right,
Forgetting not the limbs
That once shaded its mythical protector,
Strength posed as man’s potential.
How unaware,
Yet forgivable,
The ignorance of youth,
An age clinging tight
The few years it has.
And how impassioned I become
Upon visiting where once I did fantasize
My own kind of mischief,
Hidden by the branches and leaves,
Guarded by mythology
I knew but little of.
Today…
How prescient this quixotic head of charred wood,
Once of imagined stone,
Askew like a court jester pondering me,
Seeming able to laugh at himself
As I ponder the legendary apples,
Coaxing from me, as well,
A grin of acceptance.
A Flash Fiction remembrance of my father’s lesson as we sat inside the newly built treehouse, I’m lifted back to the story of Eurystheus ordering Heracles to bring him back the golden apples of the Hesperides, a garden which was located in the Hyperboreans' land on the Atlas. These golden apples symbolized the Knowledge whose limits were, and continue today, constantly receding as human evolution progresses.
The Golden Apples of Greek days included the Aristotle view of the universe on the back of a turtle or tortoise with Greek view of the sky as the center of the universe. Of course, that was not true knowledge, but the Greeks introduced us to mythology and the power of story lessons like this one.
Thanks for sharing it with us.
Ron
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In ancient literature and art, Eurystheus (Hercules cousin) was usually depicted as a cruel and cowardly man, even going so far as to hide at times in a large jar when Hercules came to report to him. Their relationship was tenuous at best. These two characters could be likened perhaps to Odin and Thor in Norse mythology. Hercules' 11th labor was finding the apples of the Hesperides in a magical garden at the edge of the world. A variation on the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden in Holy Writ. An interesting write (with an obvious deep and personal meaning to the writer) that most will read, and take from, differently. Thanks for sharing. rlc