Continuing...

Does anyone have preconceived notions of what he will find
when he enters the secret pavilion of the Lord?
Let him lose those notions.

When this man entered the curtained realm,
(while wind chimes rang gently around him)
he hardly realized he had such notions,
until he found them unfulfilled.

Had he expected the woman to be
lovely?
(Dewy and nubile.)
Had he expected her to be
wise?
(Meditating on some elevated rock?)
Had he expected
divinely ordained mutations?
(A couple of extra arms, or
writhing snakes in her hair?)

What he found?
An ordinary woman.
In an ordinary gown.
She stood
sipping not so ordinary chocolate
from a scuffed,
pink plastic mug.
And she looked up at the curtains
as if ever seeing them
for the first time.

But then, she looked at him.

And all his former expectations
became truth again
in her eyes.
How are eyes that have no guile and no agenda
anything but lovely?
How are eyes that see the horrors of war
yet still exude love (rather than fear, or hate)
anything but wise?
How can such eyes be anything but
a divinely ordained mutation?

And although she'd never met him before,
she reached her hand out to him and invited,
"Walk with me."

She took him from the pavilion of their meeting,
into the royal woods,
where all traces of the outlying desert
were inconceivable.
The skies looked down
and began to swirl strange patterns in their clouds.
Their crystal layers appeared
like a field of slate
under thinly running waters.

The season was high autumn.
"Not until I came into your land did I realize
it was autumn," he said.
"My days in the desert did not afford me a good sense
of the passing seasons."
She reflected for a moment. "Well,
it may not be autumn
elsewhere.
But it is always autumn here."
He was confounded by that statement.
"Always autumn?"
She touched one leaf, still brilliant green.
alongside another, brilliant orange.
"In this place, it is right to always see both.
The threat of looming winter,
does it not bring out the most noble colors?
But life is not yet completely asleep."
And he realized she was right.
It fit this place.

So they walked trails
where long and elegant seed pods
sliced deep burgundy cuts,
in mounds of moss.
They walked where dead leaves
clattered against the trunks of their host trees,
refusing to take their fall silently.
They walked along a stream
whose beach like flagstone, rocky smooth,
had so many muted stones
lying level, flat in the sand;
laid ther,
by the press of waters long removed, but not
without their residual influence.
And although he'd sworn to himself
to disregard the former paths
of flowing streams,
at this Queen's side he could not help
but notice.

They walked where a small tree stood--
slender and clothed in dead leaves.
Like brown husks not reailzing their abandonment
they nevertheless clung
in their little leaf cities, but for one
a small one, and bright
glowing green
on an otherwise bare and fragile branch.
"We're getting close to what I'd show you--"
said the Queen.

They walked beside thick fallen trunks,
whose pulpy powder lay at the mouth of the breach
of their splendour.
And, they walked near a standing tree whose base
was a cavern,
a hidden opening.

The man reflected on
some childhood story he recalled:
such a "doorway" at the base of a tree served
as gateway to a magical underground world.
The Queen smiled--almost coyly.
"What a fanciful story
for the likes of you
to remember."
So the man met again
his purpose.
And as men of war don't cotton soft
to stories of secret havens--
he renewed his vow to be
a serious man.

They walked where the water of the river broke to form
a side pool beneath a stand of oaks.
"What a shame--" said the Queen.
"Shame?" asked the man.
"Look into the waters," she said.
"You'll see the fate of the acorns."

Indeed, in the shallows
a muddy ground-surface was littered with tiny acorns
perfectly preserved,
un-growing.
The Queen tilted her head, and whispered,
"Did they choose where they would fall?
For that matter, did the tree of their origin
choose where it would grow?
But who can call the effects of the water bad?
In fact, the water feeds the tree's roots.
It's a puzzlement."
The man frowned.
First, she teased him for being fanciful,
then she took him
right back into fancy.
"It is simply the way of things--"
he said gruffly.
"Yes, but how do you calculate
the rightness in it?"

(Now, he would prefer to speak rather abruptly;
but he nonetheless attempted
a respectful tone.
He addressed a foreign dignitary
after all.)
"It is not for me to say--"
""Isn't that absolutely right!"
she too heartily agreed with him.
And suddenly he felt uncomfortably responsible
for the fate
of a lot of acorns.

"Here we are," she said at last.
Where they stopped, a gnarled, dead tree stood
like a forest mausoleum.
Dead a very long time.
Dead like stone.
Gnarled like weathered stone.
Knotty holes scarred it deeply.
She pointed into one of these holes.
"Look there," she said,
as if she showed him
the inward parts of a treasure chest.

He peeked into the hole,
(so long dead it hardly lifted
even the faintest scent of spice.)
And there he saw a small twig
with a small leaf
growing on it.

"I ask you, how is it
that small branch drinks life
even from this tree's roots?
So I keep watching it, tending it.
In fact, it is why I'm in this place at all.
I've been given the task of sheltering it,
here in the desert."

"But what has that to do with war?" asked the man impatiently.
She looked at him in amazement.
"Why everything--" she said,
surprised he'd even asked.

She studied him thoughtfully,
as they retraced their steps
going back by the way they had come.
"I think the thing to consider next is not
how our activity here could teach you
this art of war."

He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
"Though we fight gloriously, you can not see it.
You are blind, though I have shown you the balm that could open your eyes.
You are deaf, so I will give you the words that will open your ears."
Then she leaned over and breathed these words into his mind.
"Consider now the hardest question of all:
What is war?"