The Gnome's Spectacles
by Chris Burdett
Peering through the gnome's spectacles, you see
Your world shifted: saturated colors
Threaten to blind with their intensity;
Objects once far distant now loom too close;
Gnarled, shaggy trees reveal hidden faces,
Showing in their brown, expressive trunks frowns,
Dismissive sneers of blunt disapproval,
Jeers at your pitiful, short-lived humanity.
Soundlessly a great white stag bounds close by
Pursued by a shimmering Greek Goddess,
Naked but for her bow and quiver of arrows.
With only a faint rumble of warning
A great mountain explodes, spewing rivers
Of lava on unsuspecting villagers.
A great gray saucer lands, its ramp descends,
Scores of tentacled blue beings emerge...
You rip the spectacles from your face and
All is again normal; you see only
What reason tells you can really be there.
Dropping the glasses beside the gnome's twitching,
Still-unconscious body, you turn and flee,
Clutching tightly his red cap, the tarn-cap,
Which you will learn, when you are home and find
Courage enough to clamp it to your own head,
Does, as foretold, make you invisible--
But which also, once worn, you cannot pry free,
And which, without the glasses, hissing voices
Warn too late, strands you in utter darkness.
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