Provocative || Love is the Potion

(from a dream)

I dreamt a vale where rivers ran

Verdant green spread o’er the land

Woodland folk, trees, beasts and man

Prospered in the lees.

And there a giant idol stood

Hailed as “God of all that’s Good”

“He blessed us with (and he should)

Power, wealth, and ease.”

Then I beheld his awesome height

Watched his body built of tithe

Worshippers of pagan rite

Made a god to please,

Pleasure themselves with play-pretend:

“Insurance and savings lend

Power to the sons of men.”

Sod will worship sod.

They built and worshiped day by day

The idol grew and held sway

Of fear o’er those sworn to say

That “it” was, “the god.”

I stood beyond, in passing stream

Deep in goodness of the dream

Not I, ‘lone, but others: mean,

Poor, outcast, and odd.

Then a man with two-edged blade

Stepped out from the open glade

Th’ idol glared to make him ‘fraid

Th’ hero did not flee.

Throwing his sword so straight and true

Like a word it swiftly flew

Up and up and sank into

Th’ head of It, their King.

The idol wavered, tilted, fell

Began his descent to hell

With a sound like cracking bell

He fell at my feet.

Across the stream in which I stood

Th’ giant lay, like something wood

Water rushing o’er him could

Break and tear his form.

Then chunks and pieces of his make

Built of tithe for pretense sake

Loosened, floated down, away

Returned to some norm;

Now something useful, needed, or

Eatable by someone poor

Standing in the green land’s source

They reaped a tithe and more.

And that which had been lord of all

By lies and pretense since th’ Fall

Became fodder for us all,

Standing in the stream.