Dancing to an Elegy for Eden

Elegy... a lament, a requiem, a funeral song.

Long ago, Piers Brooks had a farm that was referred to by all the locals as Eden, favorably compared to that biblical utopia. Like Paradise Lost, the once idyllic homestead is no more.

A little, dark-eyed girl stared out the back windshield of the family car, watching it slowly disappear behind them, too young to realize that grown-ups who mourn the fact that one can never go home again, do so for a reason. The little dark-eyed girl is now a beautiful, dark-eyed woman, who finds herself alone in the world, and dreams of returning to a lush, flourishing marker in time, of what was once a cherished life.

One of the last things Piers Brooks told his daughter is that it would be better if she let it live on as a lovely childhood memory, and not try to revisit a place that could surely not be expected to still exist as the fertile, pleasant parcel of earth they drove away from, leaving it vulnerable, unprotected, and at the mercy of what was to come. Now, she covers her mouth with her hands, and stares all around in shock, and grief, with a keen sense of having been violated, too late to realize that her father had desperately wanted to spare his child the kind of disappointment that casts doubts on the validity of what were once carefully treasured memories.

Eden is dead. Evil has come, and blood has been spilled. All that remains is the refuse, the debris, the desecration, the willful defilement, and carnage at the hands of careless, lawless strangers, who have swarmed and landed, as vultures gathering to peck at the carcass. The return of the daughter of Piers Brooks has now drawn their malevolent focus and they are obsessed with the desire to claim her as their next victim.

A man has stepped forward from the shadows of the past, who loved Eden from afar and paid the price for its ransom. There can be no resurrection, but he longs to let it rest in peace and dignity. To the child he knew and to the woman she has become, his kindness is an act of respect, a tribute... a funeral song. An elegy for Eden.