'Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think.
Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts.
Be divine waters.'

C.S. Lewis

A flaking skin of salt 400km long -
a dead Narnia of crystal method
& Gypsy Snow Queens broken now
& again by a lost piece of 20th
century iron (a lamppost perhaps)
growing out of the bare earth;
an antenna, a dish, out of place
with the sleek hills denuded
as literary history.
At the bus-stop, geese & guinea-fowl
stand at ease - watch the passengers
descend; the strange talking, two-
legged animals make a bee-line
for the restrooms garlanded by
a fishpond, ultramarine with scales.
One heavy-set hippopotamus type
creature leaves the rest of the pack
huddled beside the coach's secret
wardrobe door & moves over to inspect
the twin statues on guard outside
the servo's main entrance.
The hippogriff (orwhateveritis) spies
another of its race - a green eyed
juvenile sitting across the lifeless
granite smooth haunches.
"Lion", the hip-hop artist utters,
as if unsure what language should
spill from its pink tongue colossus.
"Aslan" comes the epiphanous reply.
The guinea-fowl & geese (& all the
other creatures great & small) cannot
endure the look of astonishment on
the hypocrites face; a statue itself.
But the little (whatdayacallit?)
'girl' just smiles & repeats
the mantra, over & over; "Aslan",
"Aslan", as if it were the most
common place thing for her
to do in the world.
Love.

The Hippocratic oaf blinks once,
twice, stubs out its flaming twig
& boards the bus.
Think.
The rest of its pack does the same.
Speak.

Be poet.
Be verse novelist.
Be librettist.
Love. Think. Speak.

from a recent discontinuous verse novel - Universal Andalusia