To Hold Eternity in an Hour

by UnnamedElement

After the war, the stories say that Legolas restored Ithilien to the "fairest country in all the westlands." But what was lost in its making and what was gained? These are the moments of hope and despair that pinprick the patchwork quilt of his life in the Fourth Age: a handful of stories that, woven together, paint a picture, frozen in a moment of time: a world in a grain of sand.

7. Epilogue: From Acorn to Ruinous Age

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Epilogue

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From Acorn to Ruinous Age

Burnt wood, quenched:

Grey walls, white towers, long lives;
The depths of the earth revealed,
and they are, surprising, same as stars.

Life on life, loss on loss: doe at creek
and fawn at dusk; gold hair to white,

black hair to grey, red to a clay
that roots tendons to veins and tugs.

Years of love planted in the heart of an acorn,
tucked for a century in the pocket of your shirt,
carried, at the end of an Age, over Sea:

A young tree, reborn.

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