Spanned across the great divide,
I have seen such wondrous things,
terrible things.
Lovers from either side,
kissing beneath my hallowed cloisters,
in the moonlit night,
melting in the dim gaslight.
They come to meet in the midst of me,
embracing in a détente of mutual ecstasy.
Forbidden loves from either shore,
meet upon this 'no mans land',
to whisper sweetly, and confide,
of eternal unions that never hide.
To them, i am the sweet destination,
the point of no return,
the endless longing,
through days of heartfelt yearnings,
an abode of secrets, sweet sensual kisses,
endless bliss.
For this alone, all else seems sufferable.
yet it is never for long,
they turn, one way, or the other,
or both,
always to depart again,
sometimes in tears,
sometimes in song,
a transitory destination all along.
I have seen those same lovers,
jilted,
on lonely winter nights,
walk upon me in treachery,
broken hearted and alone,
to cast themselves into a void, blind,
unable, unwilling to take sides,
a leap of faith denied.
Those final bitter tears,
shed upon me in streams of wasted years,
loves that never came to greet them,
or those that did, and died.
In those moments, i too have wept,
yet always the dawns rise,
and a thousand scattered footsteps,
tap the beat out on my heart,
never an end, never a start.
In the quiet of that night,
I too have dreamt,
dreamt of being a destination,
the final point of a journey,
the reason for travails and yearnings,
but i am just a bridge,
a transit point for an aeon's dreams,
a crossing from a this to a that,
and once crossed, no one ever looks back.
How lonely it can be,
caught within the footsteps of eternity,
a million footsteps trudging endlessly,
across my walkway.
Always going, never coming,
from this to that,
displaced,
the endless transition,
never to be the final destination,
but for the broken or the smitten.
'Hey you!...yes, you!, who talk of loneliness,
from your lateral point of view.
I have watched you from on high,
from empty, endless, cloudless skies,
and seen the march of a million feet,
cross those waters to a timeless beat.
All the while you stood proud,
stout, within the seasons cyclic shroud.
I, however, who rise and fall, so slowly,
catch but a glimpse between these walls,
marking out each final destination,
from my vertical inclination.
At times I descend into a pit of despair,
and waiting, find not a soul for me there.
No one to wait for me,
up and down, endlessly.
I rise when i am summoned,
and fall at every beckoned call,
some rise in hope, others fall with none,
yet, better a slow decline, from a high place,
than such a quick descent,
a fatal fall from grace.
Many summon me,
press my buttons,
sometimes one at a time,
sometimes, all,
but still i must heed that call.
Crammed into tiny spaces,
silent feet, smiling faces,
sweaty summer days,
the creak of winters night,
always the moving place,
never the home,
never the boudoir of delight.
Yet, I do not cry,
or yearn to be another,
for we are precious you see,
we allow each soul a choice,
where none before were free.
They come from here to there,
they move from this to that,
but without you and i,
they are stuck, one dimensional, flat.
Maybe, only you could understand me,
maybe, it is only I,
that could comprehend your solemn cry.
Many times i have stood idle,
watching you, from my vertical point of view,
wondering what it might be like,
to have the gift and pure delight,
of doors that never shut,
open paths that lead to somewhere,
to never have to move,
yet, always have movement upon you.
We are opposites in action you see,
but not so very different in purpose,
you, and me'.
'Yes, i see you now, standing so tall,
but i have seen you fall too, slowly.
You have born them all,
with such grace.
Hopeful souls crammed into your tiny space.
These words of comfort you have spoken,
ease my soul, shine with a divine purpose,
a wisdom, a blessed token.
I know now i am not alone,
no longer a solemn bridge of pointless design.
A reach from nothing to nowhere.
For this gift you have given,
i could not find on my own,
the perspective to know we are not alone.
You have shown me, that which i could not see,
the very wonder and purpose of our true divinity'.
'And you, my complimentary admirer,
have given me such sights, as wonders do allow.
Visions of the great and the terrible,
traversing your great arch, in timeless hoards.
Only you could know what it is to be that which i am,
only you who stands strong across there to here,
with no sudden movement, no fear,
could ever understand what it is to ferry man,
forever, never, to be his point of rest,
an endless movement, in his ceaseless quest'.
'What goes up, must come down,
but better a slow fall to the ground,
what is left, travels right,
and back again, every night.
I wonder whether you and I,
who, here and there, up and down,
ferry all, round and round,
might meet together on the ground'?
'A bridge with a lift!
what a peculiar notion,
yet this heart has a mind,
of emotive devotion.'
'A bridge with a lift,
do you think it could be?
where once there were two,
dimensionally, three!'
Her
slick powerful torso shot in spiralling waves around the bay. Each
pulsing motion of her heart sped across the water and plunged into
that briny place. It was as if she had become the dolphin, and all
those yearnings spat themselves upon the sandy reach, with each
effulgent leap and every joyful breach.
The
stone she held within her heart, the heart shaped stone she had found
upon the sand, no longer felt so heavy, no longer sat so cold in the
winter winds of that icy and solemn place, and she drifted in the
tide for a while, with the roll of the gentle sea easing her beyond
the breakers, each sigh lifting the stone, imperceptibly, gently,
until it slipped between the red cliff'd walls of her silent shore,
and glistened in the far depths once more, and was gone.
One
last leap, one last breath, was all it took, and she was gone. Gone
into the salty depths, as they fell upon her hands, leaking between
her slim delicate fingers, mingling with the waters between the
grains of her golden and yielding shore.
In
wonder she saw that the sea, that seethed beneath her feet, licked
upon those small droplets, embracing them as a mother embraces her
young, and wondered how many tears had been shed to fill so great a
sea, how many loves had been lost over countless centuries that they
now washed upon her bare white toes, in this winter, this winter in
which she froze.
The
wind whipped in gusting squalls across the bay, and began to dry
those ruddy vestiges upon her flushed rosy face. The blackened
streaks marked the scars left unseen, deep beneath those salty waves
of grief, and made a fractured china doll of her. A broken remnant of
Victoriana, sullenly standing upon the waters edge, peering through a
cracked face at the white horsed promise of hope, that rose in tides,
only to sink again into the unfathomable depths, forlorn.
Why
had he gone? She did not know, nor would she ever know, he had come
as the sun comes in the spring, warm and tender, riding on a wild
cloudless dawn, thrilling her with his rays, filling her veins and
sinews, so long left cold, with a heat only new love, new hope, can
bring. He had come as a blade of grass comes, bright and luminous
from out the muddy ground of winters retreat. A testament of natures
cyclical gift of hope. He came with unbridled joy, and it had seemed
to her, that the solitude and solemnity of her youth, those long
lonely anguished hours of silence, in the dark endless nights of her
eternal December, were banished, but for a while, by the herald of
this suns golden March.
It
was, as a fairy tale is, full of bright hope, and dark remnants of
despair, one upon another, shining brightly between dark columns in
dim lit passageways of reverie. It could not last, she had known this
from the start, for no great love that sweeps majestically within the
course of natures hallowed ground lasts beyond its year. It comes
from out the silences and solemnity of winters frozen ground, melting
into cavernous and raging torrents of passionate might with the
spring, crashing through the mountains breach, smashing the fortress
boulders with thunderous intolerance, until in bright summer, it
whiles away, sweet and sensual, the endless days. Even then she had
feared the fall. From the start she had feared, the tumbling icy
fall, the fall... So distant in those days, yet ever present, as a
shadow is present in the grip of the light as it shines upon the
object of ones desire. The fall that would clasp its greedy talons
upon her heart, ripping it in ceaseless screams from her tremulous
chest, and dashing into the chasm from whence that love and hope did
start.
Yet
it was not love lost that swept upon her now, nor the broken hopes,
the imagined hopes of youthful fancy, and there careless whispering
lies, that hide the searing truth of the illuminated sky. It was not
that. It was something far more dark and dangerous, far more sinister
to a wild heart. It was rather that she was to be married, and in
that moment of her cold silent winter, this marriage was the
contrariety of that place she had treasured. That warm spring sun,
that endless June brocade of flowers and giggling ecstasy. It was, to
her, as if she were to be bound into an endless winter, never to
taste the fruits of the passion'd vine, nor smell the musk of a sweet
oiled lover, slip in tides across her fulsome yielding bosom. Never
to nestle in a bed of summer grass, caressed by the fragrance and
intoxication of wild flowers and strong hands.
She
was to be married, like chattel, like so much common cattle, and
where, before, her wild heart had beat to the thrill of her loves
former glory, thundering out its sonorous fury, even as memory, now,
only a chained and desolate remnant remained.
In
that vacuum of space, her chest broke apart, and flooded the sands
with its grief. It was as if her heart became one with the sea, so
that slowly, yet with mindless surety, her feet followed that distant
march, the wild and fervent drum beat, into the depths, one solemn
step at a time.
Graceful
as a swift upon the summer air she came, powerful and majestic, no
turbulence nor torpid vestige of doubt raced within her now. In play
she came, and as she came, she tore upon the ragged waters surface
with such ease. Her length slender and firm. She came in a great arc
of power and purpose, to greet this wild heart that had sort her out,
as a wild thing might know another, as life might know the edge of
death, the forge of its freedom. In that moment, that final moment of
numbed remembrance, two wild souls met. It seemed in that moment of
last hope, that her heart, her cold and failing heart, filled once
more with a radiance, and bathed her soul in the soaking warmth of a
golden light, in the chilling bitterness of those frigid waters.
If our love be a time,
let it run in endless line,
from the word,
unto apocalypse resigned,
then, rewind,
or if some blessed soul,
or creature divine,
wonder at the beauty of this tale,
let them forge another age,
in which two lovers,
embrac'd dwell,
and for a time...
know only the sighs,
carried upon two lips,
no distant than the parting of breath,
to fall into each moistened mouth beset.
Let this love renew,
in bright resplendent hue,
on rocks that no tumult ever broached.
The sweeping path, towards the lunging surf,
and fast, the golden sands do sigh once more,
to greet two lovers,
that in stately times passed bye.
For in that place of giddy mirth,
let two souls of divine birth,
regale the palisades with song,
and climb the winter walls with fiery hearts,
commanding every bird with talons peek,
to cry allowed, in joy,
or never speak.
If our love be a bird
let it be a phoenix.
Bright and golden as the dawn,
shimmering in the firelight,
of a shattered funeral pyre,
rebirthed,
ablaze in beauty of the song,
resounding in the fire;
Reborn, from sallow embers,
of a flickering night,
with wings resplendent,
long lived, a thousand years
of rapture in flight,
to shine in dazzling sheen sublime,
a luminescent testament,
to this lovers story,
enshrined within that ancient glory.
In summer months,
let two lovers lighten their load,
in cool caned realms of sweet repose,
so, naked,
recount the tales one to the other,
of winters icy fingers,
amongst the fiery timbers,
until the licking flame ascends,
to burst upon two supple lips,
quenched within those sliding hips,
reforging sword and sheath again.
Yet, if it be a sound,
let it be a silence,
the thread and weave between all things;
Each bird, each breeze,
that sweeps majestically,
between the mountain pass and trees,
suffused in loves great blessed silent ease.
Let each note play upon loves silent strings,
to hold all melody, each harmony,
together in sweet time,
an accord of music divine.
Then, in times departure,
our silent love will be our gain,
for in the silence,
this loving rapture will remain.
The tumbling dicey roll,
when yesterdays joy went AWOL.
One stray moment of remiss,
and everything flips upon its head…
a vacuum from the bliss.
Learning to breathe again,
can be a search between the gasps and deep sighs,
looking into a mirror with far away eyes,
staring into a sea barely recognized.
hold on…
Taking the time for the silence to descend,
like a welcome old friend,
free from the heady cacophony,
the rattling hum in the fracture of the numb…
Staking a claim in the field of your own heart,
to lift the rocks from the stony soil,
in readiness, and endless toil,
to make ready for the planting again…
Spring comes…
Spring comes again…
but first,
the silence,
like a welcome old friend.
As the leaves and ruddy ground are swept into the snows of early winter, hiding the rotten Fall beneath a canopy of a chill white blanket, I am left to contemplate the Realization of being passed over. Like a pebble, washed smooth in the lonely bed of this ice cold stream, wantonly lying down, anonymously, beside some stranger, unnoticed, beneath the waters torrent.
These ragged edges, chipped and broken in the spring wash, the rush of the Summers heat , the tumbling Fall, eased once more, resting beside a scorched hoard of stones, at the bottom of this harsh mountain. Chips and shards, chipped and scared, fallen, beneath its wintering shadow.
Nothing hides the emptiness, when the void has been hollowed in the remnants of your heart. Yet, the distraction of a warm soul, rocking beside you in that cold place, can seem as though, for a moment, it is filled again. A simulacrum of possibility, a chimeric happenstance of hope, easing the sombre moments, with the tipping of the touch in the eddy's of that wandering and aqueous memory.
Even in this place...one cannot hide. Be seamless, unseen, unheard amongst the denizen throng, this hearts soft beat tapping out the song of its longing. never to be known, never to be seen again.
How in all the world, does a poet discard his memories?
Draw back from the firmament, the ligation of his soul, and find a resting place with eyes half full, half closed, to the reflected glory of this hearts desire...The shimmering melody of that winter moon, the cruel cool glare of reflection, that peeks into his soul and shines the truth of the lost heat of that summers touch...Is there nowhere he can hide the sorrow and the shame?
If my heart were a flame, it would melt the steal with its rupture. Yet, it is but a watery grave, swallowed by the quenching bath of that steels hardening, Tempered, brittle now, close to shattering.
In time the edge will be sharpened, and the cut will be keener for the memory; but now, in this place, in this foreign land, this sea of eyes, it merely looks to hide beneath the cool waters of that winter stream, awaiting the spring melt, to wash it clean again.
