NIGHT SLUMBER
Ninety-nine years in a lazy slumber, a wrinkled old man slowly slopes out into the night."How it all looks so gritty and green" he mused while yielding to brace against the cold. He remembered so much more in his youthful years. His face turned sullen and grey as he scowled over a high bush. There a stable of strong black Stallions stirred frantically into a frenzy. Their cries were wild as if against the huff of angry wolves.Beyond the busy hub of noise, a fire- bird poised high swooped in to capture the flow of a cautious wind. Keeping steady on her course, she glides elegantly as an amber glow burns ash to cinder along the way.How he marvelled at this beautiful creature who looked even brighter within the light of her magical creation. Gently she landed into the palm of the old man's hands, who tugged vigorously to pluck a feather from her long fiery tale. As strokes brushed and blazed from a plume of smoke, the fire-bird combusted then finally melted like wax into the old man's hands. Slowly, he gulped down the thick liquid which quickly revived and restored his aging body.And with ninety-nine years for ninety-nine more, he slouched back to Bethlehem to be reborn....

+ "The Second Coming," Yeats -written after the catastrophe of World War I. It is a compelling glimpse of an inhuman creature about to be born.