Between Darkness and Light

Silence, amidst the storm of life unending.

Between the weary droop of lids.

Sleep, night-velvet sister, shines pale,

A slow falling mountain, impending.

(Blackout)

Fluting aswirl the turquoise swards:

The metaphysical me.

Frost-limbed otherness floats this astral flotsam,

Wave tossed on a foam-white sea.

(Waking)

Thunder, faint and thrilling;

Lonely call of captive beast.

Rippling whirlpools through cloud-circles,

Soul-travelling the road to dream’s surcease.

             

Ripening with age

A freshly fluted rosebud,

Sublime in pale purity.

Wafts a delicate dance,

Upon aromatic airs.

Sails streaming sheer.

Fragile and feather-thin.

A wash of wind enough to sear,

Elements caress untouched silken skin.

Ruffles of fragrant flesh,

Dew-dappled with pearly rain.

A shining swirl unfolds,

From an emerald chain.

A gently dreaming well-spring:

Creamy crown of curlicue.

Approaching first flowering:

A dawn in which, to be born anew.

Echoes of dawn

In the glades of the morning,

In the noons of the night.

At the moment of dawning,

Slowly blackness yields to light.

Breathing buzz,

From resting bodies outlaid.

Mufflings of stirring supine, 

Murmur of thoughts belayed.

Pale colours ring the eye,

With obscure shut-out images.

The entranced senses shiver,

Feeling strange tendrils assuage.

Faint callings,

Out of silence.

Hushed tones of sleepy lovers.

Quivering haze of wakened birds.

Between slumbering seconds,

Half-sounds slur.

Create indistinct imaginings:

Shapes of blur.

What births the poem?

The poet is but a rueful scribe,

Translating the world into words.

Clinging together, cell by tiny cell,

A language of life the gaze imbibes.

Then there are some beauties,

That forge beyond mundane perception.

There are those that refuse,

To be described as ordinary entities.

The person, the object,

They write the poem.

An eye only envisions it,

Comments upon the perfect.

             

Spiritual journey

Wandering the footpaths,

Lacing an orbed arc of hill.

Forging up a steep sided valley,

In silent awe of the skyline sill;

Flanked by emerald verdancy.

Fixed, eyes are drawn past,

Leagues of featureless waving grass.

Above, the gleaming sky is glass:

Brilliant ribbon outspread, vast.

Elation springs, from summits surmounted.

My thoughts with wonderment ablaze,

Spirit released from mundane binding.

Boldly the crag-peaks tower, alight with blue-silver: blinding.

             

Nights of wonder

A field of astral flowers,

Look down with lumined gaze.

Encompass everything earthbound,

In a dappled glassy glaze.

Sharp shafts of brilliance,

Pierce coating of velvet black.

Sword points stab through night,

Faerie phantoms turning back.

An orbiting necklace of star-circles,

Throbs with anaemic energy.

Slow-sweeping crowns effuse in calm,

Substance of bodies heavenly.

On nights such as this,

Mighty empires were born.

Out of the platinum skies thundered,

The flash of a fresh new morn.

The restless seas sundered,

And turbid firmament fell.

On nights such as this,

I shall muse and dwell.

              

Break of day

With open eyes, I am blind.

I stand disembodied, alone on the heights.

One with my surroundings, yet removed from myself.

Feeling my life float away.

Eerie, the silence.

The wind is laced with ice, scorching my skin.

I am shivering in pale grey radiance,

My breath billowing white.

In slow increments the sky-line is delineated.

Distant images come into focus, bathed fluorescent: cold.

Sight spans miles of colourless land,

As yet untouched by gold.

Gazing far in every direction,

I turn, transfixed at this inception.

Marvel at anaemic patchwork fields,

And the beauty of a bleak morn.

A wintry glow diffuses, in soundless stillness before dawn.