Nine Gods

[Patera Quetzal]

Well I've been a lurker so far, but I think I need to post something so my account doesn't go inactive, so here's a poem about gods....  Many of the lines are supposed to be indented, but the formatting disappears when I post it.  Not sure how to fix that, so I've added some punctuation and spacing to clarify it.

Four are the gods of the mountaintop:
  the crowned god;
  the god of the sky in summer;
  the god of the fast river
    and small fish swimming upstream;
  and the one eyed god
    whose face is the sun
      that gives no warmth but too much light

Five are the gods of the valley:
  the bearded god;
  the god of long roads;
  the god of the earth in winter;
  the god of smooth stones
    and dry leaves on still water;
  and the grey eyed god
    whose Janus head
      faces the mountains and the sea

[Numinous]

Lovely poem.  It has a nice feel, asymmetrical and organic.  I'd like to hear more about your setting, as this piece looks promising.

[SA]

I second Mr. Threat's sentiments.  It really is a lovely poem, and I'd love to hear more about the world that inspired it.  So let's turn that one post into one-hundred, shall we?  Don't be shy.

[Patera Quetzal]

Thanks very much.  I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of a campaign setting that would be worth posting.  I'm in a struggle to create a game world that feels fresh and exciting and dangerous, but I'm finding it hard to do.  One thing I've been trying is to get away from the quasi-Medieval and into the pre- or post-historic.  Probably everyone here has gone through that phase.

So this poem really is both sides of that coin (or both faces of Janus).  I imagine it encoding the collective memory of a post-historic culture.  The first stanza is a young world, where the gods are ambitious and vital.  The second stanza is an entropic world, where the gods are wise and calm.