The King of The Salamanders
Posted: January 3rd, 2013, 4:06 pm
The King of The Salamanders
The monkeys have their own songs for the Isle of the Blessed where the frog popes never used to come.
This was in the days before the Hairy Bingles came, when we ate strong and our teeth were white. We built many forts along the old railroad right-of-way & in the woods. It became almost an obsession there for awhile. There was no way we could man them all there were so few of us. We were not thinking strategically but tactically and the joy of the activity overtook us.
When we were all together like that & all about the same age our fears, which we were unable to name, were pushed to the rear among the hemlocks where we did not have to see them. None of us ever considered that we could not win. We did not know that we were fighting a rear-guard action. We thought we were on the frontier. We thought it was the frontlines & we would fight the Hairy Bingles there face-to-face and acquit ourselves with honor & victory & there would be the romance of it all. How little we knew. We knew not we had set ourselves to fight nature itself. The curse would not pass us by. We were not special. There would be no romance in the kingdoms of knowledge.
We were ready & fully equipped in every direction except in the only one we had forgotten.
The Hairy Bingles would come at us from within. Just like they did for our fathers & their fathers before them.
So today I sit here the lone occupant of this camp, a single ranger by a small fire, surrounded by snow, my mind & heart full of thin ghosts. Sometimes I think I hear voices brought to me by the wind and many times as the years have gathered I see things that inhabit only the corners of my eyes. I have not seen many of my compatriots in decades. Those that I have seen were dressed in the uniforms of the Hairy Bingles. They do not speak at all of the war. I have learned not to embarrass them with talk of skirmish or battle or victory or defeat. Sometimes they speak of the dead - they say, "Did you hear that B____ died?" or "D___ has been gone now ten years" and "Whatever happened to H_____?"
The conversations always end sadly because we do not know anymore how to end them otherwise and we go our separate ways in true Hairy Bingle fashion, in Hairy Bingle clothes, heading toward Hairy Bingle graves but ... but once we had been true partisans all.
The snow falls, coming down in big thick flakes. They melt where they touch the flames of my small fire and hiss momentarily above the coals. All of us once stood on ramparts of our own making and brandished our weapons against the wind & sky. We spoke brave and fearless & showed smiles & white teeth toward the future. The monkeys have their own songs for the Isle of the Blessed and the frog popes are on the move but it has never entered their amphibious minds that the King of the Salamanders no longer sleeps beneath his stone by the edge of the stream. He knows where his children are, dead & alive, and he is coming for them. He will take what is mortal in them, Harry Bingle & all, and swallow it up with life. He will give his children a kingdom, his kingdom, and no one will ever take it from them.
There the children will play but they will never ever need to build forts again.
The monkeys have their own songs for the Isle of the Blessed where the frog popes never used to come.
This was in the days before the Hairy Bingles came, when we ate strong and our teeth were white. We built many forts along the old railroad right-of-way & in the woods. It became almost an obsession there for awhile. There was no way we could man them all there were so few of us. We were not thinking strategically but tactically and the joy of the activity overtook us.
When we were all together like that & all about the same age our fears, which we were unable to name, were pushed to the rear among the hemlocks where we did not have to see them. None of us ever considered that we could not win. We did not know that we were fighting a rear-guard action. We thought we were on the frontier. We thought it was the frontlines & we would fight the Hairy Bingles there face-to-face and acquit ourselves with honor & victory & there would be the romance of it all. How little we knew. We knew not we had set ourselves to fight nature itself. The curse would not pass us by. We were not special. There would be no romance in the kingdoms of knowledge.
We were ready & fully equipped in every direction except in the only one we had forgotten.
The Hairy Bingles would come at us from within. Just like they did for our fathers & their fathers before them.
So today I sit here the lone occupant of this camp, a single ranger by a small fire, surrounded by snow, my mind & heart full of thin ghosts. Sometimes I think I hear voices brought to me by the wind and many times as the years have gathered I see things that inhabit only the corners of my eyes. I have not seen many of my compatriots in decades. Those that I have seen were dressed in the uniforms of the Hairy Bingles. They do not speak at all of the war. I have learned not to embarrass them with talk of skirmish or battle or victory or defeat. Sometimes they speak of the dead - they say, "Did you hear that B____ died?" or "D___ has been gone now ten years" and "Whatever happened to H_____?"
The conversations always end sadly because we do not know anymore how to end them otherwise and we go our separate ways in true Hairy Bingle fashion, in Hairy Bingle clothes, heading toward Hairy Bingle graves but ... but once we had been true partisans all.
The snow falls, coming down in big thick flakes. They melt where they touch the flames of my small fire and hiss momentarily above the coals. All of us once stood on ramparts of our own making and brandished our weapons against the wind & sky. We spoke brave and fearless & showed smiles & white teeth toward the future. The monkeys have their own songs for the Isle of the Blessed and the frog popes are on the move but it has never entered their amphibious minds that the King of the Salamanders no longer sleeps beneath his stone by the edge of the stream. He knows where his children are, dead & alive, and he is coming for them. He will take what is mortal in them, Harry Bingle & all, and swallow it up with life. He will give his children a kingdom, his kingdom, and no one will ever take it from them.
There the children will play but they will never ever need to build forts again.
