Beneath green oaks

In torpor deep, below a golden oak, I sleep in mud, ‘neath root and sod
while overhead the sky wheels by, above an ever-lasting changing land
my acorns, found by hog and jays, have grown a wood
of other mighty oaken graves, where slumber deep my noble band.

Their swords and armour now just antique rust.  The dragons that still live today
no longer threaten maidens fair, nor breathe their fire on castle walls;
now newer monsters borne of other fires, dance their deadly aerial ballets
on battlefields that once were ours. Yet still both innocent and the guilty fall.

I am future and the past, and though once dead I still remain alive.
Spread out across a place of time and space I feel a thrill of worldly thunder
shiver in my buried bones, that tells me I must soon revive
my slumbering band of knightly friends, to ride again in righteous wonder.

Though our past has once been done, we seek a future not yet won;
would that we could change the one, and never know the other.