Opetry

A happy winter's poem I wrote, partly on the tram back home from work the other day.

The day dawned dank and dreary; the sun rose sluggishly,
Gleaming greyly like a fluorescent swamp;
It wobbled up one weary step, then fell back to the earth,
Resonating dully with a grimy, gloomy 'glomp.'

The drizzle was depressing, pondered Dougall to himself,
As he descried it with his eyes a-drizzling off the walls;
It formed in little puddles underneath the kitchen table,
And ran in little rivulets through the bedroom and the hall.

And one by one the houses all grew soggy with the drizzle,
And fell in sodden clots of mud, all about the land;
And worker's in the cities fell into the waters,
And soon dissolved to nothing but waving arms and hands.

But Dougall took his dog and he climbed aboard his desktop,
And used it as a raft to float upon the rising tides;
And he floated off to regions man had never yet discovered,
Where the Jabberwocky cavorts, and the danksome Boojum hides.

He wafted into forests that had fallen in the waters,
And had become no more than mounds of mud-and-bog;
He ebbed through mountains, valleys, that had been washed away
And had turned into continents of shadows, whispers, fog.

And the shadows, whispers, fog, and the gloom, the grim, the dampness,
And the never-ending drizzle soaked into Dougall's brain;
'Till he could tell no more if he was awake or dreaming
Of a land of endless shadows, and a universe of rain.

And visions vast and morbid arose before him, wake or dreaming,
And a supernatural horror arose before his craft
- With eyes like gleaming caverns, that went deep and down forever -
And stalked Dougall through his dreams as he drifted with the draft.

And slowly it advanced and surrounded Dougall's craft
And within several hours or days, oped wide it's slav'ring maw;
And Dougall shrieked and flung his dog, a-howling, into the darkness,
Then fell down deep into a swoon, and knew nothing anymore.

And smooth and sly and silky, the darkness sank into his soul,
And Dougall knew then that the Fog had got him after all;
And he felt at last the peace that all the damned must feel
As Charon ferries them across the Styx to eternity in hell.

***

Dougall wakes - he knows not when - on an island in the waters,
And he spies within the distance the spires of a gleaming city;
He discovers that some people have fed him bread and water
Out of - he knows not what - curiosity or pity.

But now, as he walks the shores alone of this little island city,
He knows that his time is short, for the waters grow in height;
And a freckle of a shadow on his thumb is now eating up his hand,
And the shadow of his dog hunts him through the night.