The Storytellers

Sometimes, the storytellers hanging out in the marketplace, the quaint pub/shop the old house or railway station are the objects, themselves. Antiques that offer through artistic detail, inscriptions, place of discovery or some knowledge of their personal lineage, the vestiges of a story. And the rest is either revealed through research or the beholder/owner's imagination. The inanimate trouvère, on one hand hints at its tale in silence, but on the other, inspires the observer to complete or reinvent its history.

 

 

To wake things up that are in him..

                                          George Macdonald

                                     

There are centuries  of us

silent and heirloomed -- left

in half-timbered shops, temple ruins,

the spider-veiled cellar or eaves. We are given

our song by use or scene.  By those

 

who shadow the  vase, linens, lamp,

ink well, parchment, or book.

And oh!  yes, that powder horn found

in the barn's loft, abandoned 

with blonde strands of hair

clinging to its strap.  Goshawk wings

sketched along its sallow bone. What woman

shot a firearm and why --

or did she simply fill the thing

to save her husband time?

 

The tale remains sparse, spoken

through etching, wisp and place.

The rest revealed

by hand and eye that mold

its shape into a chapter.

Whatever scenario

gives the relic a relatable

air,  an intimate ghost.

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The artwork is a detail of a larger work by 19th C. illustrator, Arthur Rackham,

from his "Ring of The Nibelung" collection.