A Tapestry of Roses

I will sit by a gentle flowing stream
that holds the moon in silver radiance
and there, whisper solemnly this creed:
"I love you now as I loved you once":

And remember, my untutored lips
to say this, both in good or ill.

What song is this, within our hearts ringing?
what tune is this that graces our ears?
songs of love, with a melody pealing,
unknown to the sweetest of all birds:

Songs that tell of nothing else
except the passion that we share.

Let us leave the earth and take our place
in the assembly of the stars,
and our souls, dare to embrace
this offspring of our beating hearts:

Entwined tenderly with many-a-thousand posies,
bound, heart-to-heart by a tapestry of roses.

Beyond The Starry Night

My love is not of this place,
she is coming to me from outer space;
we would shame Mercury's fire with our love,
and gallop across Venus from dawn to dusk.

The Earth would not hold us firmly to it,
the plains of Mars must feel our feet
till Orion and Andromeda gaze in starry wonder,
and marvel at such a love as ours.

We would soar, aloft, borne on the Sun's light
and relish all of Jupiter's pride,
on the rings of Saturn, we would mount our nest
and drift awhile, to a blissful rest.

Uranus shall rejoice at our approach
and beg of us to make him our home
but love has no abode save in the hearts of men,
no cosmic sphere can be its den.

For aeons on end, our love shall bloom,
and swell the fortunes of a thousand moons
we would be the envy of stars and comets,
Neptune shall bow and call us blessed.

I will drown myself in this celestial praise
and kiss her feet at Pluto's gate. . .
O, my love is not of this place,
she is coming to me from outer space!

Footprints

Will it hold my spirit
as it climbs?
My soul,
as it rides this curl of smoke
that creeps up the thatch?

Pure, rain-washed,
prodding the murk,
probing Erebus,
sowing light.

Vaulted by this rhapsody,
a web of notes, strong,
within me,
against the Wind.

Will it
hold my spirit?
Will it
my soul?

As Visions lay, cremated,
wombed,
by impotent ash;
longings withering in
the stale breath of years
as I lay, snared
by dreams unlived.

Will these offspring crumble too,
a specter
of bygone years?
Will the footprints grow sun-baked
with no sprout of green?

Therein,
is the dream that strains,
the stealth,
that stumbles in - unbidden,

to pull the silent strings,

to birth the notes, to
rapture me.

At Twilight . . .

At twilight . . .

I slip through the wormhole –
across the rainbow –
this half-visible coloured torus.

I, walk the two-manifold-disc;
shape-shifter, shifting from
substance to non-matter, beyond

the wormhole, beyond the horizon’s
rim-thin reels of crimson,

as the sun with a jealous eye
kills the ageing night.

I,
shape-shifter, shifting this
twisted tale of twilight –
this virgin vortex, beyond

blue rocks that kiss in doom, beyond
winged-ram-fleece, beyond
climes, where music thrills from strings stretched
from the sun –

The music of the Shining City,
weaned on the winding wish of the whirlwind . . .

There she stands . . .

There she stands,
Queen of my dreams –
her eyes –
twin lighthouses for
my storm-tossed soul . . .

Her tresses flirt
with the wayward wind –
coaxed air makes a lair in her hair . . .

I will watch the moon leave its hiding,
I will watch as nighttime falls,
I will watch her heart and read therein,

The beauty of it all . . .

Here, I stand,
washed by her eye’s pool,
here, I bow – captured – a slave,
not conquered by a sword – but a look.

Clasp the roaming wind . . .

Clasp the roaming wind, bend
its sinews to the east; it is not
its destiny to
sip the sop of Sisyphus . . .

Clasp the wind –
tease its veins . . . its flow,
towards the hearth where
the embers fail.

Ferry the cumulus;
wind-hinged vats of black milk –
storm cloud-blobs, which beat
their drip-drip-drip;

drops distilled from ashes
of a cremated creed . . .

And the wind goads the clouds
to balsam,

to knead,

immortal plumes from the ashes . . .

Whispers

A wind-tossed leaf
with a voice -
soft fluff on the ripples of a breath,
flows to the end of an echo;

Lone leaf, learning
the lore
of the wilderness;

Lone pilgrim
of the Wild.