I Took a Leaf on a Journey
Scarlett Hall
I took a leaf on a journey
I did not know how far we would go.
Across the mountains of iron,
And into the seas of the Archipelago.
Across to ships of clay
We looked into teacups of storms.
Saw rivers of gold, not a hint of decay
And creatures that shifted their forms.
We flew past lands where the ends were not clear,
Joined the birds as they soared, free in flight,
At dusk I told stories of people far and near,
And we sang in the golden moonlight.
The leaf was as happy as it had ever been
It came from a land full of grey and black
Soot and steam, fists that smack.
The holes in men’s souls were stained dark with blood.
Instead, their tear-filled Archipelago would often flood.
They pull the forests down too, the leaf tells me.
The emerald of my land was but a memory
The grey seeped through the cracks of gold
And had crumbled to dust in the axes of old.
I took the leaf away from that place,
Away, far away we lived near the mountains.
The mountains of iron and the seas of the Archipelago
That the Humans could have had, but didn’t.