To be, and not to be

I was finishing writing a cadralor poem this morning and it struck me that it’s the perfect form for the Oracle. Each stanza takes the words/theme from a different page of words and the Oracle slips in the message in the closing stanza. It’s a hypothesis anyway. This is what she just gave me.

To be, and not to be

1.
Rust, such a pretty colour.
Though it comes from ruin and decay,
creeps in the sordid places, acid-damp,
it runs the woods with the deer.

2.
You always said I was blue,
hair the colour of bilberry juice, honey-skinned.
I was a peach by any other name.
I never told you what that was.

3.
Day screams before it soars
into the world the moon has left bereft,
the raw cries of owls,
drunk with sunlight, fading.

4.
Crush these dried lavender flowers;
the smell will linger for centuries in the fabric
of gowns packed in a cedar chest,
as long as it is never opened.

5.
We wish for the rain to stop,
like we wish the bitter words could be unsaid,
the war never started, but the sea is still the sea,
and salt water will never run in this stream.