Red clouds streaked across the dawn’s bright beams. One placed its warm hand upon the boy’s eyelids. He awoke. Light flooded in, and as the boy stood, a song filled him, an as yet wordless hymn. A lament and a resolve. He turned to his friends the horse, the toad, and the raccoon, who had gathered at the edge of the bluestem to consider what to do, and to await the awakening of the prince. He set his gaze on their eyes, and as he did the melody reached his lips like the lapping of a tide where the sand retains the sheen of the departing wave. The boy gave it words.
And this is what the boy sang, lyrics that remained inside the friends and were later carried into the ears of many a listener in the years that followed.
The owl, fresh on his watch after the falcon, heard the song, and he committed it to memory. Though the boy had not named his song, Salt did, that future generations of the tribes of the Valley would better remember the moment. It is called the Song of the Manchild Miracle, and it remains a hymn sung by the tribes in times of reflection after a loss, such as when albatross mothers contemplate their empty nest or when crickets croon to untimely rain eclipsing the harvest moon.
I floated on the water cold The stars were looking down on me I came up from the bubbling hold The iron looking up at me I heard their voices crying out The moon was watching with her light I tried to see them, give a shout The clouds returned me into night I woke with sunshine in my hair The sand was sleeping in my eyes I heard the ocean singing fair The breezes brought my skin the skies If ever you have seen Papá I’ll pull you up from where you stay If ever you have seen Mamá I’ll hold you till you show the way If ever you have seen the gems That sank and kissed the ocean floor Please tell me how to swim to them And tell their friends to weep no more Plod, Bog, and Patch abided in the song. The surf soothed the shore, assuring the listeners the sea had heard the song, too, and would take it deep into its realm of remembered things to influence the currents such that, one day, a song would surface in return for the one heard; a song that all would be well. © Kurt Mähler
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