A Legion Of Memories, Imprecise Poem by James Whitworth

A legion of memories, imprecise,
Crowd the crowing sleep when I retreat
Between a tunnelled-birth where I became,
And this, my final end I cannot fear.

In the beginning a breasted babe,
A new-born prince presiding.
Regent in a rented castle,
He towered above the earth in his repose;
Who signalled his intention to the throne
When he to his own Avalon succeeded
To watch the dancing emerald flame,
Those leaves of grass that marked his kingdom’s end.

A rise so rapid must contain a fall,
So was it when his narrow rule dissolved.
Displaced among the tyre-stained streets,
His destination sought was solitude.
There remained the child until matured,
And found a brand new world when he emerged.

All thought of conquer now dismissed,
New sights were set on comfort’s bough.
Though in the cradle had he never rocked,
The resulting fall had still not been denied.
With hardened heart and cynical resolve
Came entrance to the common man’s domain.

Was a cause of much surprise encountered,
And is still, to his unending pleasure,
That from this simple life contentment blew
Upon the carrying winds that bring him through
The reminiscence and the youth, of which
Both have fallen derelict, to stay
Untended ‘til the day when, long to come,
The tomb-lid cracks to ancestral pries.

It is with this incumbent theft,
I wake to find no more that blinking light;
The nagging voice intent on sacrifice:
The betrayal of a relinquished past.