Dust and Sun Rays
I presume that those who are called to write—whether that be songs, novels, stories, or poetry—are called at some point by a voice (or event or image) of some kind.
I remember my call very clearly. I was sixteen. It was summer. It was a very hot day. Shade at a premium. So I entered an abandoned house where—so rumor had it—someone had hung himself in the attic. So, up into the attic I went, just to sense that long ago mythical death (or something along those lines).
Now, the house was kind of ramshackle, you could see daylight (although morning, this being northern Sweden, the sun was already high in the sky) quite clearly through the vertical cracks between the boards of the attic wall.
Then I took my first attic step, which stirred up years of undisturbed dust which took to the air as if startled, creating one of the most beautiful spectacles I had ever seen: a gathering of light-sheets wherein the dust danced and beckoned.
A little stunned, I sat down, looked and looked and then purely instinctively, found paper and pen on my person and began to write. Unfortunately I don’t remember precisely what I wrote, but it had something to do with having to capture this vision in words, in a poem of some sort. Forgetting (for the first time) to be self-conscious about writing, I simply wrote, and wrote, and was quite transported in the writing.
There has not been much looking back since.
Years later I wrote this short song about my experience.
The Words:
Dust and sun rays
dance for me
in sheets of light
that flutter silently
Still too young
to understand
this simple dreamer
gently gathers them
in his hand
An ever so real
handful of sun
rises to heal
hearts that crumble
lives that stumble
Startled by
his very heart
they smile
but always depart
Ulf Wolf
Summer 1992/Spring 2015
Copyright © 2018 by Wolfstuff
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