The Loon of the Lethe

Story and Song by Allison Stella

Way, oh way she’ll take you down

Where memories lost are never found

There is an unmarked lake drawn on the far North of some maps

Beyond where towns are named, beyond where roads can pass

And if you eavesdropped stories woven ‘round a birch bonfire

You just might hear this legend that pricks deep like any briar

That lake, you’ll hear them say, is ages older than the pines, its

Unnatural nature frozen out of memory, out of time

Its sole inhabitant is something feared yet fiercely sought

Like any demon creature, her deals are dearly bought

The Loon what haunts lake Lethe (the Teller drops his voice) - 

She offers pilgrims danger and offers them a choice:

Bring your darkest memory, leave it ever at the lake. 

But to fail the creature’s challenge marks the gravest of mistakes.

See, a man devoid of memory is no longer a man called

And she may take one memory, or she may take them all. 

So if you’re still there sitting while the embers lose their glow

And digging deeper into thoughts you wish you didn’t know

Temptation leaves you thirsting for that sweet oblivion

You plan that trip, you lift your hand to caution throw to wind

If not for that one heartache that still grips from long before, 

Your healthy sense of warning would be harder to ignore

If that eternal sunshine could flush through your shaded mind

You’d walk from Lethe lighter, and leave that pain behind. 

So if you pack your rucksack full and fill in that blank map

You’d head North hoping it’s still you, but better, coming back

If, while you step from that last path and slip between the trees

You might hear that high echo riding on that crisp night breeze

Each ghost-white trunk you pass a page that tells your woeful tale,

A saga scarred so deep you dare the Creature’s pow’r avail

Maybe it was someone you held dearly now since gone

Or else an act you can’t take back or bear to think upon

Each detail of remembrance would cut deeper than a blade

As closer to Lake Lethe   your fated way you made

But-if you allowed the respite of a detour in the mind,

You’d muse upon the new  you who’d emerge clean and so kind

How easy to reach out a hand unshackled by such grief 

How eyes unclouded in each man a brother spies beneath

The Loon of Lethe offers more than rescue for yourself

But lighter ways and softer days to all you’d meet as well

So if you start to see a clearing outlined by the moon

Take disconcerting comfort in the night call of the Loon.

Enrobed in plumage darker than the plunge of deepest lake

Her red eye is the first you’ll see and make your knees to quake 

Its twin a rippling flame reflected in the glass below

Her crimson eye arrests you, speaks a language you now know:

“Trav’ler,” she thinks in your thoughts, “if you’ve come by mistake,

Pray, tread no closer to the shoreline of my sacred Lake.

But if, instead, you’ve come to barter, seek what few can find;

I’ll give you peace and take in turn a piece of your marred mind.

Now heed this warning I give once, though few change their resolve:

I’ll slake my thirst for memories on one you choose, or all. 

And if yours is the cursed case of all experience cleansed, 

You’ll no less know a stranger * than your most cherished friend.

You’ll recognize no scenery, you’ll nothing to call home. 

Automaton-like, sapped of spirit, from this place you’ll roam. 

An empty mind will fill itself as vacuumed space a squall. 

Your only vestige of this visit:

When you’re sitting in the quiet, 

So far away you question it,

You’ll hear my spectral call.”

If you begin to theorize how to evade the worst, 

How best to earn Her blessing rare and not the creature’s curse,

Before your thought can finalize, she’s in your mind once more:

“The merit of your soul I’ll weigh. My plume will keep the score:

If from the lake’s depths you ascend no later nor before 

My feather’s rising to the surface, then I’ll know for sure

Your woes outweigh your sins against both nature and your kind,

You’ll break through breathing as yourself but with unburden’d mind.

If this, the pact you pilgrim'd for, is still your aim to make, 

Account yourself well-warned before you step into my Lake.”

If, deeming ataraxy worth the life you chance to lose,

You might slide off your pack right there, you might pull off your shoes. 

You might look up to gauge the moon with this last look you’ll take

With these same eyes, no matter what transpires in the lake. 

And just the same, no matter if Her judgment best or worst, 

You’ll lose that wretched recollection even if you’re cursed. 

You might step in, you might exhale too sharp to call a sigh,

And, in a maelstrom, draw once more into Her deep red eye.

Both feet submerged, you’ll have no words to utter, none to cry

And with your limbs too stilled to swim, you’ll drift forth paralyzed.

She’ll draw you close ‘til you can divine feather from lake black, 

‘Til inky cold sets in and signals there’s no going back. 

The Loon of Lethe pierces you with her infernal glow,

Then with her sharpened-iron bill, she’ll take you down below. 

The cold and dark! The rush of lake! She’ll drag you like a doll 

Your ears will fill with Lethe’s depths and somehow, still, her call. 

Down in the hypolimnion where everything is still,

She’ll loose you from her godlike grip by opening her bill

You’ll scarcely make out, in that red glow, how she’ll turn aside,

And pluck the feather from her wing by which you’re to be tried.

You’ll feel the breath sting in your chest while you regard the plume, 

Remembering this instrument brings blessing or your doom. 

The feather’s outline blazes as she holds it, staring back,

Her bill goes gape, that red eye shuts, and everything goes black. 

Nothing but your need of breath could guide your watery climb

Who’s to say if you would meet the air at the right time?

Amnesia anesthetic or a total loss of self, 

If Lethe hollowed out your soul there’d be no way to tell. 

But don’t you hear the night loon’s call enough to make you think

That it was you once on that shore, that your self once did sink?

That you’ve forgotten your best days along with that great ache?

You’ll never know the wound that wound up leading you to trade: 

Thousands of irretrievable sunsets

The best meal you ever shared

The color in your lover’s smiling eyes

And a beautiful sound you heard once across the water

July 2025