Mother mist rises

A wayra sequence from the Oracle has nothing but hope this morning.

Mother mist rises

Mother mist rises,
enfolds in her gentle arms
purple night shadows, brushing
with changing light, sun hues
and the golden taste of morning.

Cold death slinks away,
drawn by the sunken moon,
lured by music, siren-sung,
beyond the horizon,
sparkling now with molten frost drops.

Roses rimed in frost,
their honey drips slow and sweet,
melting like the damp darkness
beneath tree shade, dark-boughed,
and I recall their summer scent.

Winter runes

From the Oracle, illustrated by Franz Marc

Winter runes

1.
The music of the North Pole plays
frost vibrato of grass stalks beneath an unseen sky,
diamond ripple of running water notes,
while the black ship, ice-bound, awaits
the finale, the report of floes cracking.

2.
From my bed I can see
the blue tits around the window shutters,
industrious tapping, pecking and prising
insects hidden in the wood, the hinges cold with night,
their hollow bird bones stronger than mine.

3.
You glower and complain at the rain,
the running rivulets down the window panes,
the dullness of the light, irritation sparking
in every brusque movement.
What will you say when the storm breaks?

4.
She’s there, the lake goddess
where the rocks of a single island
break the silken skin of the water.
I hear her song, honey-coloured in the evening light,
and wonder do I dare take that cold path.

5.
Reading the motifs in the carpet,
the bird, the eye, the star,
beneath my feet, the sky’s reflection,
woven by hands far away, years ago;
the colours sing the answer, clear as well water.

The ship bearing flowers

The Oracle gave me a wayra sequence today, five stanzas as usual.

The ship bearing flowers

Take my breath away,
dance the day armed with flowers,
laugh with the lingering light,
lie on the ocean’s bed
beneath the sky, its rippling tide.

Darkness is only
the breeze among winter boughs,
the hole in the heart, ice-fringed,
its secrets, spring-revealed.
I watch for that returning sail.

Showers, baby-blue,
explode, cork-popping with joy,
the sad pavement grey forgot
in the upsurge of light.
See the truth; this is what you are.

In the evening hush,
by the fire, dog lies dreaming
of a long life still to run,
but the watching stars say,
Wake, now and run with the wild ones.

We are almost there,
you and I, the same colours
fading like pale evening clouds,
though, the glass, not empty,
reflects so much more still to come.

Resolutions for the new world

I visited the Oracle today, having forgotten yesterday that it was Saturday, and accidentally used one of the old word sets. The result is an odd cadralore. Not sure if I hope this is a sign of things to come.

Resolutions for the new world

1.
Beauty, the first word that springs
from the cluttered twigs of words,
to make a forest of a poem,
to soar in this brisk wind
and wheel overhead when night comes.

2.
This dress I once loved
is a trick of the light,
a limp rag reflecting nothing of the past.
I kept it because you said you liked it.
You say you don’t remember.

3.
All around me are symbols of the chocolate god,
sweet smiles sipping and nibbling,
the rustle of glossy paper,
and in the background, saccharine music plays.
I drop a coin in the beggar’s cup.

4.
The shadow man says he can’t sweat,
and spring breezes over him with a shiver,
summer leaves him cold
I watch the way his eyes shift as he licks his lips
and wait for the flicker of the serpent’s tongue.

4.
The beast is back, black and new hatched,
mad lies in the mist and looming rocks,
but we can defeat it if we would, with roses,
the soft purple-pink of evening light,
and the song of the thrush in the treetop.

There is always something more

I didn’t have time to visit the Oracle on Saturday or Sunday, but she had kept a message for me.

There is always something more

Moon petals blow on the black wind,
singing through bare boughs
touched with the red of the old sun.

There will be no more sadness afterwards,
no more grief when smoke rises from the chimney again
and children’s laughter rings out bright, clear.

The dream is over, but on the bank
where you used to sit, its beauty lingers,
like roses reflected in the water.

The race is almost run,
the river almost reached the sea where sleep waits,
and only gulls soar in a pure sky,

the mother sky that bends to gather us in her arms
with the purple clouds and the last of the roses,
where light is music and love goes on forever.

Looking for what lies behind

Looking for what lies behind

1.
This is how the aching starts,
when fingers pry apart the pieces and the music shatters.
I trudge through the muddy gaps between
looking for you, poles apart.

2.
Drunk on spring air
the wind filling the trees with light
leaf-flutter and the spread wings of the winter survivors,
I shake off the ash of a hundred fires.

3.
Rain we have had running in rills
rivulets and rivers to the sea.
Even the earth sighs with the spongy sound of it
punching holes in bedrock.

4.
Dreams are like a lost language
painting pictures for the blind
their voices never cry out into waking
their tongues tied in rainbows.

5.
Mist is your friend, you say, fills your hands with diamonds
but I long for a clear sky. Only pull back the veil
and you’ll see the budding meadow at your feet
the purple and gold in the sky.

Birth days

Birth days

This day I left the womb, the warm waters, to swim
through so many unwanted places to reach a semblance of calm.
The rain has stopped,
and the winter-bare trees reveal a misted horizon. Empty.

We will have summer here, and the waters will shrink
to a trickle, the skin of the earth crack,
and we will long for something else. Perhaps a storm,
perhaps only the quiet weight of a dog’s head resting in my lap.

Black is a cold smell of dead fires and the deepest leaf mould,
the refuge of dark things and the whispering of winter wind.
The bonfire is over, the sparks settled somewhere
out of sight. A new constellation is born.

Words can be red angry as red meat on a slab.
He tosses them out like offal, and I wonder how he can live
with a mouth that never tastes the music of opera,
never wish to be the sweet song of a bird.

The sun juices pictures from trees, open meadows, the restless sea.
There is too much light, too much I don’t want to see.
I sit with you, waiting for moonrise on the stone bench,
where the summer scent of roses lingers.

The beauty beyond

The beauty beyond

1.
Diamonds don’t cry,
not even when they are cut, shaved smooth
to suit our facets.

2.
The dream came from the east.
I know, because it had pink sunlight
draped over its shoulders.

3.
She left music in her footprints and spring flowers,
made cooking pots and medicines,
so they erased her.

4.
Sun, egg-yellow blob in the sky,
skin-tingling, and the earth rustles with gratitude.
I wait for the first roses.

5.
There will be blue again,
lake water reflecting nothing more sinister
than spring clouds, scudding.

From this, forests grow

I wondered if the Oracle would give me a cadralor today.

From this, forests grow

The garden shrinks,
cringes from the snapping of the cold,
bubbles with mud boiling from worm holes.
A wren calls in its fierce voice,
and for a moment, winter listens.

There are always shadows,
even in the crook of your arms, and tears are never far.
You smooth my hair from my face,
gentle as that lost look.
There. They fall.

For some, the threads are tangled,
and worship is tied to the kite string of abuse.
Their hands tangled with caresses
strike purple bruises
across the same trembling skin.

Show me how sleep is not death,
the coloured mists within the darkness,
and walk with me where we were happy.
Look with me for the prints of our feet
beneath the fallen leaves.

Sprung from crawling, rotting earth,
petals curl and unfurl to elaborate the rose
and the music of its scent. Remember that,
when the ocean sky roars and pours only bitterness—
stormlight and sunlight are cut from the same cloth.

Beyond the clouds

The Oracle at her best (maybe), with Odilon Redon.

Beyond the clouds

Beyond the black and the purple lines of the sky
(watch them stretch and clear),
shine the singing diamonds,

scattered polar lights
(from red, green), dropping here in veils of silver
to envelop the skin of the meadow.

There is always an afterwards,
always a sort of spring
(though the winter bites deep,
and the seas heave with drowned sunlight).

Always there is a moon that soars
through bleak skies
(moon or memory glows, the turves shift,
your eyes shine again),

dimming the brittle sharpness
of diamond-light,
beating with the same pulse
as a (weeping) heart.