-The Mirrored Maid-

-The Mirrored Maid-

The owl replaced the nightingales sweet song,
and spoke in sombre tones a darkened truth,
appealing to the gods of slighted wrongs,
the thunder tongue of wisdom spoke forsooth.

Love rests not beneath the willow,
nor waits beside that ever running stream,
for now his head sits sad upon his pillow,
low, beneath the ground, inside a dream.

Look not into the dim-lit sunken corners,
nor trail the fleeting footsteps in this place,
seek comfort in a gathering of mourners,
for thou bright light has gone without a trace.

For though you look to heaven for an answer,
and woo the countenance lost all too soon,
no bright and airy sun reclaims this dancer,
he left with her, the mirrored maid, the moon.

 © Richard Michael Parker 2012



Photographer: Brendan Zhang

A Walk

A Walk

Walking along the high road, I stopped to take in the spire of a 14th century church, Gothic architraves and reliefs, weathered, silhouetted against the sky, the slow clouds rolling like cotton wool across a light azure heaven. I noted the old elm before the spire as i looked up, and wondered how many others had noticed the spire had been rebuilt,  sporting a masonic compass and square beneath the cross that sat atop the sky.

An old gaslight, no longer illumined in the daylight, stood before the tree, and i breathed in the whole scene, as the mad rush pelted the walkways around me. Ants scurrying about, desperately fighting the time.

Easing my camera from my pocket, i took one of two shots, up into the sky, and adjusted my straw hat, so as to shield the naked sun from my eyes.

I noted an older lady pass me by, and thought for a second that she wanted to say something, but the moment passed, and she moved on, resigned to her silence. So i called after her; 'Glorious weather we are having isn't it?', she stopped in her tracks, and turned, her elderly wrinkles smiling at me from out the years.

An hour later, we had both enriched each others day. I had learnt all about her time in Sicily, and the Belfast dockyards. How she had been evacuated in the war as a young child and seen dogfights in Irish skies, Mafia dons with blackened eyes, and the history of the inception of that shadow organization from the perspective of an Irish woman who had married a Sicilian man, living in foreign lands, with her babies eyes staring into other skies.

'Time winnows us all through its great sieve,
and Shiva's dance destroys even the fleeting memories,
wrapped up in past joys,
and tied in the bow of contentment.
All that's left us are the token gestures in a stream,
passing endlessly before us.

A tipple from a draft of the ever fluid past,
slipping in sips, through the rivulets of your mind.
When even memories, become mixed and mingled,
will you still recall the moment of our calling?

or..., like the passing throng,
washed endlessly along,
will the memory simply pass you by,
swept aside, Lost...
like all those feelings, laughed or cried,
until at last, I too become lost,
a remnant of the past, an unremembered cost.'

Taking the time, to make a little time...

© Richard Michael Parker 2012

No Heart Is Lost

No Heart Is Lost

What is distance to the heart?
No mile, nor hour elapsed,
that ever bore the weight of the departed,
lightened the soul.

For in the gathering time,
pushed down into the womb of the world,
the heavy burden unfurled, grows fat,
gorged upon the marrow and the cost.
The tumid bloated crush of loss.
Bedraggled steps, upon a mountains jagged edge.
The shifting shale of despair,
straining out the seconds into years.
The thousand yard stare,
stretching out the inches into tears.

What does love know of time?
When your heart beat in mine,
did the clock count the ticks, and the tocks of your feet,
as they stepped across the street,
in the steady downbeat of the salty rain.

No... It is the mind that forgets.
Memories purged in a sea of regrets,
awash in a currency of debt.
Mountains, heaped upon the heart, moments passed.
In the quiet space,
a thousand years, and a million miles from grace;

The first twinkle of your soft eyes,
splashed in the luminescence of your smile,
your heart beats within my chest,
and all the mountains,
and the worlds that passed between us,
cannot stop the thundering flood of love.
For you are here again;
Not a second has past,
nor a stray breath, parted from these lips.
All absence, filled in the heartbeat,
of your trembling fingertips.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012



Photograph: Amber Ortolano

Seeds of Love

Seeds of Love

The smallest seed of love, that means everything, is greater still than the great love that means little to those who encounter it; For the seed, nurtured by those who recognize how precious it is, will in time, and care, grow into a mighty tree, that blesses all who dwell beneath its shade and eat of its fruit. But the great love, that means little to those who are careless with it, will simply wither, weathered by the vicissitudes of time. It isn't always how great a love is at the beginning that counts, rather, it is what it means to those that share it, and what they are willing to do to care for it, that truly counts. Some loves are great, and diminish, others are grown from the smallest of seeds and become the mightiest of oaks over time. What it means, is the difference between a rock becoming a pebble, and a seed becoming a tree.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012