What wakes from the dark

A collaborative poem with the Oracle, a puente.

 

Something is born when we wake out of the dark

into the cold grey light,

a stream that runs to the ocean,

bright as we want to make it, they say,

those same warm voices full of smiles that warn,

Don’t look back into the fire nor stare into the swaying branches,

just let the red rhythms of the night

flow into the slow green and blue,

 

~even though the window is broken~

 

and the wind blows cold,

learn to see the lies that shine too bright to be true.

Lead will not turn to gold through yearning,

life streams flow rough; the banks are high,

and time flies on relentless wings

always north into the wilds, but look,

even there in the clear brilliance of frozen air,

the stars.

Only ask

A collaborative poem with the Oracle.

Only ask and all the air will wake with joy

to the slow rhythm of the morning.

Taste the salt blue of the sky,

the smoky softness of a dewy meadow,

the rough velvet of secret trees, emerging from the mist,

the liquid brilliance of the moon.

The breeze is haunted by the voices of the past,

the whisper of babies and old women

 

~dwindled to a memory~

 

the raging of the storm,

this breeze is full and rich,

and entwined with the thistledown of dying breath

the vibrant pulse of night, birthing stars,

the tangle tendrils of day-thrusting shoots,

life that swells and grows and beats;

taste its hot tang with lips that speak words of hope,

and treasure its trembling on the brink of being.

 

Fire-words

Painting Paul Klee’s Fish Magic

 

Fire-words growl in the breath of morning,

anger snarls red in the golden memory of sunrise.

Remember the night, you whisper,

those times of soft thoughts and tenderness,

let them not drift into forgetting like smoke clouds

 

~on a rainy day~

 

like this, there is no more magic,

eternity drinks from a cracked cup,

and stars spill through a hole in the ocean.

What was secret

is now just darkness, lost

 

~in the vastness of the truth~

 

there is hope, you say,

small grains finer than sand,

scattered far and high as stars,

quick and vivid as fish shoals

in sunlit shallows

 

~where kelp waves like grass~

 

I peer and see the jewel-glitter.

Smile at the dew in the grass, you say,

bird shadows skimming,

let burning joy melt the monumental marble of sorrow.

I see and touch, the cup runs over, and I let it go.

And the Oracle explains*

*see previous poem.

A magnetic poem, the Oracle’s explanation, and also pretty surreal.

 

Blue is just a picture painted over the sky.

Watch how stars soar through the light,

shining like heavenly ships on a dark sea,

fiery raw as a rain of red rose petals.

When the mists rise, you will see through the black

and the purple darkness, love’s dream,

in the moon’s garden of shadows.

Almost blue

Second collaborative poem with the Oracle.

 

The air is almost blue, colour of night,

ice, ghosts and glassy waves.

 

Look for the red in wild flowers, turning leaves,

the flash of bird-presence among dark trees.

 

Listen to the blood beating to the music of life and

know that all is one, the eternal whole, the circle joined.

 

There can be no life without death, no joy without grief,

and at the end there is always you.

Dragonflies

The first  of two collaborative poems with the Oracle.

 

We live a dragonfly summer in winter’s craggy shadow,

mist on our skin obscures the touch of love,

a thousand rasping whispers drown

the music of the singing ship.

 

Was this ever us? we ask,

and point to dancing lights on the water,

scattered bright as crushed diamonds,

did we ever feel such joy?

 

We watch, and beauty

aches in our bones,

never reaching

the coursing blood.

Oceans of salt and tomorrows

After (or between) torrents of rain, the sun is shining. Chaffinches are cheeping outside the window and a robin is singing. This is a collaborative poem with the Oracle who always knows best.

 

There is beauty in the pinking of the sky

and in the blue diamonds of seawater,

rolling so gently towards the sun.

I lick the salt from raw lips,

slick the sticky spray from my hair

and watch the faces in the changing clouds.

 

There is beauty in the red of rose,

the smell of rain held in curved petals

and in the reflected pearl drop of my moon,

sailing in skies purpled and cleansed of mist,

where not even the black of death

can crush this rising storm of spring with you.

 

I remember brilliance in the vastness of night skies,

in the microscopic treasures in the grass

and the otter-smooth roundness

of polished stones at the water’s edge.

I remember laughter in the wilderness because there was you,

and eternity was a maybe, a perhaps.

 

That girl is a ghost now

but she still smiles at me

across an ocean of tomorrows.