The brilliant sun burns merciless and bright,
The earth below is dry and scorched from light.
A desert vast and barren wasteland wide,
Devoid of life except one bird of pride.
A phoenix soaring near the bright’ning disc,
That burns within the empty sky so brisk.
Of all the endless land, no life is seen,
The phoenix quick, surveys the barren scene.
Its gaze seeks signs of life below the ground,
But finds no motion save its shadow bound.
“Nothing in this direction,” thus it said,
Then banks to left, its wing-tip gently spread.
The sun-scorched earth remains a barren waste,
Of ashen gray and windswept dust with haste.
No search finds hints of life or even trace
Suggesting life once thrived in this same place.
Deserted dunes and rocky crags abound,
The winds have formed these canyons all around.
“Perhaps,” laments the phoenix, “since first days,
This land has known no life, nor will it raise.”
And with that thought, despairing, shrieks aloud,
A piercing call unanswered by the crowd.
Forlorn, comfortless, the phoenix swings,
To land upon the highest crag it brings.
With outspread wings that brake its mighty flight,
It lands in one majestic bound of light.
The wind blows coarse through its majestic plumes,
The phoenix scans the empty land of glooms.
A woeful emptiness and silence reigns,
Save for the gales that ceaseless howl in pains.
The phoenix feels alone, forsaken there,
A solitary isle in deep despair.
It contemplates its solitary fate,
Till from afar a shadow moves, though late.
The phoenix turns its gaze and wonders much,
The shadow grows, the sandy plain to clutch.
It seems to swallow all the western sky,
The sun begins to pale and dim on high.
The wafer moon between the sun and earth,
Begins to move, eclipsing sun with mirth.
A cosmic spectacle, the phoenix stands
Transfixed, forgetting loneliness in lands.
It feels a surge of gratitude arise,
For witnessing the grand celestial prize.
“Why this? Why now?” it ponders, yet in vain,
It seeks the answers easy, but in strain.
The phoenix lost in awe of this event,
Not noticing the firestorm near is sent,
A rain of meteors that blazes bright,
Coinciding with unexpected night.
The phoenix like a statue, motionless,
Remains in awe of Nature’s grand success.
The winds are drowned by meteoric roars
That mark the barren ground with fiery scores.
Yet on the crag, the phoenix stands unscathed
By showers of iron, from deep space bathed.
The growing fires set the earth ablaze,
A hellish furnace where all ground decays.
The sun itself is darkened by the moon,
And Terra Firma turns to hell too soon.
The phoenix in the flames resigns its fate,
Its fiery form consumed by scorching state,
Throws up one final gaze toward the sky,
Then surrenders to final fate, to die.
Terra Firma now a hellish sight,
Dante’s Inferno brought to life in night.
The solar eclipse freezes at its peak,
The moon unmoving, atmosphere so bleak.
The sky alight, a thin and tenuous veil,
The phoenix burning starts to shift and pale.
A shape begins to form, a human shape,
A man emerges from the flames’ escape.
Around him all the landscape starts to bloom,
The sun grows softer, gentler, air’s perfume.
The grass begins to sprout where flames once burned,
The flowers bloom, and trees bear fruit returned.
The rocky crags burst forth with limpid springs,
The air is filled with birds that chirp and sing.
From simple life to beasts both great and small,
The barren earth springs forth with life for all.
No longer phoenix but a human form,
He gazes on his shape through vision warm.
Halfway through disbelief, a column bright
Descends with thunderous peal on grass with light,
A pillar of bright flame that strikes the ground.
The phoenix-man now startled, hurries round
To gaze upon this wondrous sight so rare.
A limpid pool becomes a lake of flare,
The pillar burns with incandescent light,
And from the blaze a human shape in flight.
Approaching boldly now the phoenix-man,
The radiant being stands, a wondrous plan.
With booming voice that shakes the very air,
The figure speaks, “Your name shall Gabriel bear.”
The phoenix-man now christened so, baptized
Is bathed in living light with wings revised.
His psyche flooded with a thousand streams
Of near-infinite visions, cosmic dreams.
The avatar and Gabriel the same,
From distant eons, fate fulfills his name.
© The Bipolar Bard. All rights reserved. 07 May 2011
submitted by /u/RedRipeApple192
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