Oh, The Way that Kings Go

This is a work in progress, and I will be editing it over the next month or so. I am planning to attend the Boston signing for Brandon Sanderson's Shadows of Self tour (Mistborn #5), and I hope to give him a Seussically illustrated hardcopy of this Stormlight Archive tribute.

One spren, two spren,

Lie spren, truth spren.

Are those blue spren truly glue spren?
This one makes a skyeel fly,

That one shows up when you die.

Oh what a lot of spren I spy!

You have light in your spheres, You have shards in your hand,

You have surges to help you to fly and to land!

So where will you go?  Somewhere high? Somewhere low?

To the great Reshi Isles, or somewhere with snow?

Perhaps you will dine on some Horneater Stew,

Delivered directly through Urithiru.

Or maybe the Shin will sell you a chicken

(eating it helps Thaylen eyebrows to thicken).

There’s so many places and people and spren,

It’s easy to wonder just where your path ends.

But please, don’t forget, it’s the way that you walk

that matters much more than the place that you stop.

Yes, the road that you take, whether straight, curved, or bendy

always matters the most—just ask the Parshendi.


___
Less complete stanzas, may not be included:

I looked and I saw him step onto the wall.

I looked and I said, "Now, why don't you fall?

The ground should be down!" and I said it with feeling.

He smiled and simply stepped onto the ceiling.

Look at this place all broken and cracked,

Those bones that are scattered, those stones that are stacked.

It started way back on the night of the feast,

And now they have been here for six years at least.

They all came down south to have a big fight

All because of the man who wore white.

The place where you think is an odd sort of spot

Where you're likely to meet all the things ever thought.

Some things are backward and some upside down

In this place where your thoughts live in cities and towns,

Where ideas you've had and things that you've known

Have taken on life if their own--and then grown!

Shadows go backwards and seas become land

 and the land gets replaced by an ocean of sand

 And each little grain holds a glimmer of light 

that makes sure something out in the real world looks right.

Ocean IV

Under a yellow umbrella he sits in the shade with his face to the sea.
Castles of sand resting out on the shore start to melt in the rush of the tide.
Pebbles in windows and seashells for doors, and a pennant of seaweed and twigs
proudly defiant of waves overflowing the fortress defenses so thin,
not even noticing how all the waves have been washing the walls 'til they're smooth.

Scattering droplets of ocean behind him and sand in his wake as he runs,
chasing a shadow that chases a ball who is heedless of castles and waves,
a dog leaves behind foot-shaped prints in the sand, tiny tide-pools that glint in the sun.
Seagulls swoop low watching closely for crumbs, or for crackers, or cautionless crabs.

Ocean II

Hemmed in by the surge and spray,
Breakers crashing on the quay,
While wrung-out bells in buoys sway,
I huddle 'gainst the pounding sea.

The jetty muffles to a roar
The sound of waves that strike the shore,
Harbingers of what's in store--
Their salty mist rains down on me.

A moonlit night

Looking up the moon is bright above me in the sky
            right above me in the sky
                        in the starry empty sky.

Reaching out


Feeling down


Breathing in


Nov 24, 2008

Dusk

When the clouds are hanging low
and the stars are hanging high
and I’m sandwiched in the middle
’tween the mountains and the sky,

When the city down below
says ‘good evening’ to the night
and a gentle twilit breeze
begins blowing out the lights,

When the birds and bats are dancing
through the changing of the guard
and the grass begins to soften
while the sky is growing hard,

When the smell of autumn colors
washing up into the air
sends a trickling stream of stardust
to cascade upon my hair,

Nov 24, 2008
I think I did finish this at one point, but I only have the old version right now.

Life

We delude ourselves
when we measure life in years, in days,
diluting our experience into volumes of time.
We speak of attaining an age
that is "old" and "ripe"
as though one were a piece of fruit that,
by virtue of its patient sitting
on the kitchen counter, perhaps arranged
aesthetically for friends to look at
or for an artist to preserve on her canvas
in a "still life,"
could earn tastefulness, sweetness, maturity.
In the same breath with this callous appraisal
we imply that time, in excess,
can cause decay, overripening.
It is not the white space
on the edge of a clock face
that makes one old or young.
Life is not sitting in a fruit bowl;
life is action--battle, even--contending
through the moments and challenges
that present themselves with not
the methodical directness

of clockwork,
but frenzied, unpredictable spurts of growth and change.

Life is fighting fires,

is facing illness, fording rivers, ferreting out weakness,

falling in love.

Life is discovering fallacies, respecting friendships,

. . .

We cheat our friends when we say that memories

are things of the past,

that immortal influence is something that must endure

through ages of forgetfulness

before we call it meaningful.

. . .