The Song of Seasons

The Song of Seasons
By – Robert Goldsborough

      The moon sat high like a large eye watching everything.  He did not sing or utter a single word.  His fingers talked their way through each note of the song that came from his guitar.  The music mocked the wind that blew its own music through the bare limbs of the winter trees.  I lay still as stone on the damp ground and listened.  The earth vibrated with each plucked string.  I felt the sound resonate through me.  I could not move, I could only witness.  The music was a slow burning, the death of leaves in autumn.  Shadows danced across marble tracing the melody of the names to add to the song.  Names carved at the birth of this ground gave flight to the shadows and they took to the trees.  The burning of autumn grew low and fed the cold fields of winter’s sowing.  I felt the cold white notes pass through me to freeze the earth.  I was like the headstones that surrounded me.  The winter music brought the wind to circle the small dark man that caressed the instrument.  The wind beat the trees, the graves, and me.  I thought all the winds were gathering to hear the song and the changes it sang of.  Away on the backs of breezes flew the tones embracing the flight and stirring the shadows in the naked trees.  Phantoms as if reflected in great burning pyres slithered from the frozen ground to jump into the blowing fray.  I stayed rooted like a planted seed awaiting the return of spring.  His fingers tripped over themselves to build the tune higher and faster.  The phantoms writhed spasmodic in the coming fires.  The wind dropped its burdens and I heard the notes fall like cleansing rain.  The earth echoed back the music from its dark soil.  The ground moved.  The phantoms ascended the trees and locked limbs with the fading shadows.  The graves resonated and split wide.  New shadows crawled from the vibrating dirt.  Limbs reached out for the burning song.  Spring brought life to everything.  The names returned to their old tattered flesh, now free.  Old shadows and new phantoms embraced tired bone and withered sinew.  I lay like the stones.  The man stood playing the song out of the graveyard.  Those that returned followed.  I did not see where they went, but I knew they would be until summer ended.