'He Wears No Crown...' Poem by Rebekah Gamble

Deep in the valley
full of numb despair
there is a hollow hill.
A dark place in the grass
marks it's entrance.
The walls within
are lined with flat stones.
The floor too is made
with the cold, smooth stuff.
Unfurnished, the emptiness
accentuates the size of a large old man
a king, a god, a man, a memory slumped
in a high chair at the barren center.
His eyes closed, his hair long and grey,
he is hopeless and silent in his heart.
His beard is long, his skin grey
and his face is covered with wrinkles
which have collected the dust
of the motionless centuries
of belated death.
His hand lays heavy, large, unseptured
on his stone throne,
empty of hope or dream-
empty of relief.
His dusty garb
is archaic
and the colors are dulled greatly
by the collected dusts of time.
He wears no crown.
At last, his loneliness is broken
by one not unlike himself.
She is young in comparison,
but is ancient in essence,
a woman curved like the rivers,
face smooth as granite,
made smooth under falls of earthen hair,
She is mother, sister, daughter, friend,
a thousand children and the lack thereof.
She bows in reverence to one
who can not understand,
can not remember,
does not even lift his head
or shake off the cobwebs
between his fingers.
She speaks but is silent
and he can not respond.
She struggles as she stands
and finally succumbs
to falling on her knees
at his feet.
Her face has become wet,
and she rests her cheek
on his knee as she cries,
cries, and cries tears
of thousands and only one,
of rain and peoples,
of war, famine, rape,
and slaves.
Of many children,
but few childhoods.
But he does not raise his head.
His chin is motionless
on his breast.
Within the hollow hill
the sadness, the silence
eats away her cries
which are her being,
her pain
which is her flesh.
Silence eats away
until there are none
save the black shadow
of her knees on the stone
where she kneeled for eternity
and the air is laden
with the thin echo
of her cries, dead
but living, a memory
of the air within the hollow hill.