Unicorn
There was a time, the child was told,
When unicorns ran
hundred-fold
And hid, then flew, then hid again,
But no one
said exactly when.
The date that unicorns arrived
Could
not from legend be derived
And neither did the stories say
Precisely when they went away
Now, most of us would be
content,
Not knowing when the last one went,
But to the child
it seemed to be,
At best, unsatisfactory.
No matter how
it asked around,
No answers had the poor child found.
So,
spurning other media,
The child asked Wikipedia
The Wiki
pages understood,
The creature was a force for good,
But
nowhere did they really say
When unicorns had passed away.
The child began to smell a rat,
Society was not like that;
It
liked its histories cut and dried,
Recording when things lived
and died.
Which led the child to speculate
On unicorn's
eventual fate;
If no one saw its final fall,
Perhaps it
didn't die at all.
The instant that this thought occurred,
The child could see it was absurd,
And there the matter
should have lain,
And never come to mind again
But
that's an easy thing to say,
At least while in the light of day,
But after dark the wisest schemes
Lie conquered by the power of
dreams.
The natural world enthralled the child,
So
naturally its dreams were wild
With birds and beasts in many
dreams,
In forests, mountains, lochs and streams.
The
unicorn at first was small,
And hardly even there at all
With
scruffy coat and wobbly horn,
As if it was just newly born.
It flickered in and out of view,
Then slowly, as the magic
grew,
And ancient memories stirred inside,
The unicorn
solidified.
At once it saw what had ensued,
And bowed
its head in gratitude
Towards the child who sleeping lay,
Then spread his wings and flew away.
*******
Such tales as this, one often
finds,
Discomfits normal tidy minds,
And even after counting
sheep,
This story may not let you sleep.
So boldly tell
the tale again,
Recounting every why and when,
But softly,
like a lullaby,
Then you will sleep - and I will fly
Copyright Allan Bantick December 2017