The Wizard's Orb
The original Final Fantasy was one of my favorite video games when I was kid. I stumbled onto it by chance - finding a $5 copy at a Canadian garage sale. $5 was pretty unfathomable for a video game back in the early 1990s. Luckily, the original owner's dogs had chewed up their copy and they didn't feel right selling it for more in its half-destroyed condition.
The game followed the quest of four adventurers to restore magic to elemental orbs that had thrown the world into chaos. While later sequels and re-releases would change it to elemental "crystals," I always really liked the way "orb" sounded.
And that is literally the whole origin of this piece. I wanted use the word "orb" in a poem. Enjoy!
Find comfort by my campfire friend,
Perhaps you’d care to share a tale.
A yarn to fill the long day’s end,
And help your heart grow hale.
This story is a simple one.
In a far wasteland there doth lie,
A place parched by the blazing sun.
The only sounds? The buzzard’s cries.
This land is host to a Wizard’s tower.
He lived all alone, they say.
He peered each moment and each hour,
Into an orb clear as cloudless days.
This ball of crystal revealed all the world,
And the spaces in-between.
He gazed on dragons and their treasure hordes.
On brutish ogres green and mean.
It showed him ancient halls and trolls.
Vampires and their vassals.
Queens and kings and halfling holes.
Orcish clans and crumbling castles.
The Wizard viewed wonders and glories grand,
But realized one day he’d ne’er really seen them.
So he left the orb in his tower and,
Wandered off to a horizon random.
So now the orb in silence awaits,
In dust and darkness - all alone.
Wishing for a better fate,
And for its wizard to come home.