The elderly guardians of the ancient gate

watch with wizened satisfaction

as the heart-shaped young acolytes

clean up its rust,

fix the hinges,

give it yet another

coat of paint,

and once again make

the effusive signs of greeting

seem fresh and

anticipatory.

Their kind has stood by this gate

night and day in every battering

tempest, through every howling

battle, in every

blistering drought,

and through every earth-ripping

upheaval.

They have watched over it

from the moment

the Persecutor's brain

was flattened by the

electrical storm that

transformed him into

the Fool,

the Slave,

and the Prisoner.

The gate stands ready to greet

the only One

who will ever pass through it, the one whose

arrival must surely be waiting

on the cusp of the

morning,

the one whose long-silenced voice

is even now

readying its

glorious proclamations.

Faded invitations pass

from elderly hands to callow ones,

and all gaze toward the

heavens once more,

waiting for signs

and miracles.

He wanders through the jagged landscape

of the 3-D asylum,

its inmates wrapped in shrouds

made from solemn, decaying manuscripts,

redolent of dried blood,

suffused with the color

of dead seas and prayer-filled

deserts, and

steeped in wrathful love.

They look at him

with pleading, piteous eyes,

hoping to save him from

the worst sufferings of their

fear-saturated

imaginations,

calling out to him

to join the cloud-destined

procession, urging him

onward toward the ladder set in

majestic isolation in the

heart of the windswept field,

its cobbled together rungs

boldly reaching toward eternity.

It is all he can do

to not simply

give in and clamber up

the steps and leap

off the top,

hoping to ascend to

unimaginable dreamworlds

of transcendent peace,

rather than finding out

just how unforgiving

sun-hardened clay

can really be.

The trees are resonating

to the sounds of the sweet voiced

little dinosaurs,

the most earnest of them calling

I am here

I am here

I am here

into the twilight of the caldera,

convincing the credulous apes

that the song is for

them,

that its delicate urgency

is for their benefit,

and that the airy songsters

have no darker purpose

but to convince the apes

that the world is meant

for apish ears alone.