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.

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White ship

For dverse.
Painting by Odilon Redon
First line borrowing from Michael Drayton.

• 

White ship

Fair stood the wind
for the ship that sailed
on sunlit waters, sheets pale
as the white-breasted gull,

and in her hold a cargo of dreams,
a cargo of lilies and all the scents
of the world we have lost
in her white-feathered wake.

Samhain sailing

For dverse.

• 

The dark time has come to this shore,
sunlight gone, there’ll be no more,
not this side of the darkest door.

Our ship’s sail’s set, gull-breast white,
her hull careened and painted bright,
ready to sail us through the night—

Lugh bring us light.

Before you go

The Oracle knows.

• 

Before you go

I watch the wind with its petals blowing,
across this heart with an ache ever-growing;
be still my friend, I’ll not be going.

The wind that blows cannot chase the light
in the rushing clouds, they shine too bright,
your trusting eyes, in the dark of night.

Mother and friend, captain of this ship,
I am always here though the last light dip
and dim in the waves, I’ll not let you slip.

A thousand things still you have to know,
and a forest of roses I’ve still to show,
a sky full of music, before you go.

The star in the sky, the pear in the tree,
I’ll be lavender, thyme for the honey bee,
and I’ll guide you home, where you want to be.

Coins and other sides

• 

Coins and other sides

There are stories too sad to be told
to be sung by violins
shouted blue as a painted sky
and though we stir the bitter dregs
we find no sweetness.

Shadow is the other side of light
the dark juice that runs through the green trees
that outlines the softness of feathers
the silence behind the whispers
the sharp retorts.

Wind draws mist veils across the sun
and whips the storm clouds
driving ship-death upon the rocks
stripping golden leaves
and scattering the year across the mud

but there is always beauty
in water diamonds
bird music
the eternal light show of the universe.
Even when there is too much sadness to bear.

Warbler singing in the key of purple

• 

The colour of this summer is purple,
of storm skies, bruised clouds
and the dark beneath forest boughs.

Only the brave sing
with their thin threads of voices,
gossamer drifting across an infinite emptiness.

Petals fall, torn untimely,
a sea of regret for the blue promise
of spring never fulfilled.

Less is not more;
there will never be enough flowers
in this meadow or birds in the hedge,

never enough light in the sky
to show the truth
to those whose gaze is a dark tunnel.

Music drifts brave and sweet,
a thin thread, tenuous, barely there at all,
but what does life offer more beautiful?

Sea roses forever

• 

Sea roses forever

Sea purple or colour of roses as night falls,
picture the shadows salt-scented,
where summer swims in sweet water music.

Then the singing stops, becomes a pounding
in the head, and the whispering of imagined muses
is a blow beneath the belt.

I see the rocks beneath the satin surface
where old bitterness flows, the craggy
subterranean echoing with a distant cry.

I will arm myself with forests,
cloak my shoulders in diamond spray
and a thousand fallen stars.

I will not sleep
until the blue of serenity fills
the ocean-sky depths again.

Perhaps this was the message
in the wordless cry, not despair
but a call to arms, to run, to fly

and cast a soft shadow mantle
over the spreading stain of black and red,
sow the green of hope.

One day

• 

One day, I hoped,
flowers would bloom through the frost,
the ice crack with joy on the frozen pond,
the salt-sad ocean fill with joy,

and on that day,
when it came, I filled
from toe to top
full of the light that pours
from the boundless fiery dark
of forever and ever.

I hear your voice,
your familiar tread,
see the light lent by the stars
in your eyes,

and suddenly that day,
that began so long ago,
begins all over again.

A wish

• 

Beauty flows beneath
the skin of this world,
singing with the nightingale,
whispering like the sea.

The bitter-bare has flowered,
and in the trees, spring shines
through the wind.

Ask, and I will blow your dreams,
hatched from dragons’ eggs,
coursing with the sap of the moon,
into the mists of summer.

For it will come,
and love will light the cool shade
of the garden with heart music,
and forests will grow, sweet as honey,
into the open arms of the sky.

Dream, blue and running,
and may you never see the ship
that founders on the shore,
or the red rose fall in russet sighs
among the raindrops.

Fly

There are sharp angles in the air,
wind-blown spring debris, rain-spits,
the ghosts of melted ice somewhere north.

Slow stars stream like growing words,
and the vast book of the sky is already full.

We need never live, says the voice in the dark,
the universe throbs with poison and joy enough.

So, what is there in this broken blue,
what magic lingers like salt in a sea-soaked sail?

Perhaps if I blow away with this breeze, fly
with wings of grass and feathered petals into the night,
I will remember where they run,
those bright rivers of light,
and cup them in hopeful hands before they die.