" Summer spirit, now she closes book’s end,
Days of youth spent, carefree with friends.
Kari plays now to that what she does not wish,
Lost summers days and angelic youth a’ missed.
Seasons do change and children grow up,
Passing through lives, life never stops.
Endless years, bleak they the mind,
Adventures of youth, throttle in time.
Desires entwine, one grows old,
Love loses her grasp, love slips from her hold.
Bygone dreams, sleep they soundly by,
Hopes for another child, not her soul-self I.
Grasped for never, dreams never learn to fly
(Within one’s dungeon, the darkest place to die).
And Winter’s chill, lays she to rest,
Dreams unobtained, fallen in the quest.
Kari knew she was but a dream, solo in its flight,
Ne’er taking wing again to caress innocence’s light.
And to live and live as she once is and now,
Stands she forever, stranded on time’s fallowed ground.
The love she lost she can never now have,
Graspless eternity plucked burning from her hands.
Love forsaken, the summer, silent and high,
Tears shed for what was once and not now, I.
Dreamless hopes far long spent,
Lie shallow within, deep strength relents.
A hollow traverse of endless life,
Lives she the knowing of eternalness light.
Aye, silent dreams slip they the day’s long night,
To tell of loves once beholden now lost in her sight.
In love’s abandonment, Kari, spills she away,
To dream upon those clouds again on some somber, summer day.
Thus, before evening rusts corrode the golden days,
Before innocence is raped and youth spirited away,
Before night blossoms forth, and day forgets day,
Summer’s love requests of us that we all do stay–
To hear a tale one has long since heard before,
To tell our souls twice over now and forevermore–
Graves are full of those who never lived but could,
Heaven and Hell are packed with those who knew they should,
And eternity, relentless eternity, brims with those that would.
--Garden of the Dragons c h. 23 "

― Douglas Laurent