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HOBBITON: THE PERFECT CHILDHOOD
[III] The Returning Wizard
"A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to."
- Gandalf The Grey (Walsh & Boyens)
1
Gandalf the grey wizard arrived - the old hippie,
that wandering conjurer of 7,000 years before,
who smokes our weed and brings the fireworks.
He is an angelic being who resides in the body of an old man,
in a full pointed blue hat, a little creased and worse for wear,
a long grey cloak and a silver scarf, inhabited by many moths,
a long white beard and bushy brows that stuck out beyond
the brim of his hat, that took us to the edge of an ocean,
the place where the elves went, to The Grey Havens or
at least the world that was known by those in Hobbiton.
2
Oh Gandalf, you see that I have a beautiful heart.
Butterflies are enough to break it.
That deep green peace of The Shire
where I get sidetracked,
or waylaid and where I must rest
forgetting this urgency,
that turns my eyes from day blue to grey,
when they gaze away from the old tree base,
where I read my books ----
to out on the haunted Barrow Downs,
and further than Old Man Willow
and into the eyes of you, Gandalf.
How you have been, my friend of old?
Bring the fireworks to my humble heaven.
Stay a while in the bliss of Hobbiton,
and rest your ancient weary heart,
and smoke the Halflings weed with Uncle Bilbo,
and bring the light of your wisdom into mine,
as your old eyes glint soft and golden,
like pebbles beneath a moving stream.
You tore me away from all I had known, yet I believed
we might save the world, when you came into The Shire.
3
Peace is golden and the last sunlight -
is given to those trees and crops,
that stretch down into the night time -
valleys of insect and fertility. Hobbiton.
You could live all your long life here,
in the wisdom of bright-eyed youth,
in the shadow of the returning wizard. |
