The Nightingale's Spell

Chanting the verses
of a black magic spell
like an immortal, old soul,
the nightingale sings
perching on a fragile arm
of an age-old tree
somewhere on a bank
of Mississippi

It murmurs
long forgotten syllables
of time and life
and love
of passion and darkness
and light
of things spoken, unspoken,
things known and nameless.
It enchants the dormant Ophidian,
makes it dance
to the beat
of a mortal heart

It exhumes the mud-covered skeletons - of long-tamed and buried beasts,
feeds them ever so gently - until they grow stronger than Redwoods
who could have ever imagined - the soft, the charming
the gentle - nightingale
is the spell, is the fountain - of all the darkness
and all the darkness itself

- Uththara -