Sappy's Vision, an excerpt from "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons"

this excerpt from my novella-poem "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons",
comprises the final stanzas from the 'night of dreams', wherein each of the
characters is visited in a single night.
*******

Sappy stepped sadly through the backlit forest,

wary and weary from a night scanning signs;

gravely shaken by unpromising portents

ominously twinkling in sinister trines.

the astral aspects were full of foreboding,

and the patterns formed by flocking folk were drear.

never before had leaves lost their luster

or berries been bitter so early in the year.

in an instant his surroundings were shifting;

constantly whirling in contrary motion.

countless particles shimmered in the air,

spinning the currents of a cellular ocean.

hues were suffusing in myriad directions;

a kaleidoscope escaping its frame;

gradually altering everything in sight,

save where he'd come from, which remained quite the same.

Sappy was confronting a vast living picture

composed of tinted light and rippling sound,

a bier in the midst of kneeling figures,

in a sea of pink flowers, reposed on a mound.

mammals and birds swelled overhanging branches,

and swallowed the sorrowful stretches between.

their heads were bowed and many were wailing.

a lachrymose wind lapped the edges of the scene.

though he stood on the brink he couldn't see faces.

so he leaned in closer, squinting his eyes.

and the vision vanished in that very moment,

trailing a whisper of wearying sighs.

he reeled and collapsed in the trampled clearing,

grasping at grass that had recently been burned;

and wondered if he'd witnessed the future.

it was then that he noticed the fog had returned.
*******
(thus endeth the excerpt - Evan Hawthorn, 13th of May, 2015)