Following, are excerpts from “A Garden in the Midnight Mountain Forest“, a play by David Dumdei. The play, in two acts, explores and contrasts our desire for a life filled with love, truth, and goodness with the practical nature and needs of the world as it really is. It can be purchased in the marble forest store.

Stories

Green and blue is my doorstep.
Lovely blue, and beautiful green growing is my
forest home.

grand world
dinner engagements with lots of talking,
place where everyone lives happily
together, settlers, pioneers,
family men and women,
and lonely men and women,
grand world?

How lovely green and truly grand, and
blue like a breeze of flowing sounds
is the field where
I live.
On sunny days the berry
juice is warm.
By evening the ground is
hard and dry.
On wet days the caves are
moist and humid.
Drops of water cling to the
hard rock walls.
The sound of the rushing river.
and just before sun down we all run through the
green trees.
And jump towards the
heavy blue sky.
Where I live we come in as the sun falls
and dry off by the fire and under the stars
tell true stories of
our days.

A Cigarette

Hello today.
Hello, goodbye,
and may it all be well and fair
my beloved yester way. Hello and goodbye all in one
and there’s nothing I can do
to separate the two.
Good morning my love, wake.
Let us be off to our Paris,
our holiday, our honeymoon.
I want to leave the world and be
only with you.
Tonight we will fly
through the mid-night mountain forest
and under the moon
proclaim our innocence before God.
We’ll sing to the top of harmony,
rich and ever living,
free;
the music that never ends is our souls.
Amen.

Faithful World

Graceful clouds glide by
and rain riding rays of sunbeams
down from heaven beckon me.
All of us, together, riding a chariot
of marble blue and green.
Through bright rays, past dark rays,
fairly we sing;
a conglomerate of perfect sounds
reverberating from a gem
in the heart of eternity.

Graceful clouds—swirling,
and twinkling and dancing beams
of sunlight open my arms
and stretch my hands up to the sky.
Make me raindrops,
make me to fall all over
the pure green fields and trees
and bright flowers,
roll me down the warm fawn’s shoulders,
the moist eyes of an owl tarrying
staring, searching, knowing—
the heart of God—
make me a raindrop to fall
on the moist eyes of a soft owl,
peering to all our stretching horizons—
wrap me around a jungle
of sweet and warm fruit juices
beating like blood through crisp branches
that bend and sway in the wet air of mist and spray—
a geyser of thick and steamy minerals
that teach the world to grow.
Come—faithful world.
True.
Divine.

Twelve Words

If there were ten words
for beauty
I’d use seven for this night—
twelve for this creature.
What better bears witness to God?
Such honesty, purity is she.
When she walks I see the purpose of feet.
When she talks I understand
the intonation and timbre
of the human voice.
Where she goes, whether to or away,
I see places
for the first time.

Holiness

I want to write a girl that
expresses the sun,
the rain,
exotic clouds,
all with her face and hair, her eyes, her lips;
I want her to know
what a moment taught me;
the moment I came in from the wind
and saw her sitting before it all.

Eternity

She dips the tips of her frail toes in the cold spring river somewhere a day far away. Her dress with many nice colors blows against her body. Lovely clouds glide by and a messenger riding the rays of sunbeams down from heaven beckon her. The icy water feels good but it’s still too cold to swim. She runs, jumping and skipping barefoot through the grass to a shallow point in the river. She crosses to an open meadow. Clouds swirling, and twinkling and dancing beams of sunlight open Monica’s arms and her hands stretch up to the sky.
Her toes slip through the green grass and the wind fills her long white hair. Monica’s agile feet, tired from the exuberant dances, move to rest under an oak tree. Her eyes catch a possum briefly before it van-ishes into its home. Rising, slowly, her soul filling the field and up to…