Shifts

The sky has closed in on me, presenting a grey shroud as if it were a much-anticipated birthday gift. “Happy New Year, now be subdued.” It is dark and I am tired both from lack of sleep and dreams that have haunted me like a helpless child just out of reach; haunting for sixteen months without relief.

She is a familiar spirit visiting me for some sin of which I’m yet unaware. The lodestone of my heart; I am doomed time and time again to have my decks shattered upon the rocks only to have them rebuilt and redisconfigured.

9:25 am. A newspaper wakens me to a new year and alerts me to the successful relationship of ——- and —— and my mind is glad but my heart pulls the grey shroud from the sky and wraps it round like a blanket, tight as the grave.

Had I known ten years ago where I’d sit today, would I have set the same course? Would I have chosen safer seas, free of sirens and mysteries?

I do not know.

All I know is that any glimpse of land is more mirage than reality. We few ships on this endless sea flash code through the night. We ask each other and the stars whether we made a mistake in choosing not to winter in safe havens. The ice is packing, screeching as it collides and closes in with the sky until our sails will be torn, our masts broken, and I will have landfall –

either on the rocks, the ice or the ocean floor.

Trance

She is the tune of a violin, exciting the air about her

like a stream pouring from hills crowned in mist –

slowly, quietly; a gentle presence like a lovely ghost.

 

She reverberates in the firelight with eyes like almonds.

Her gaze pours into me like Niagara into a cave

until the dam closes, she is gone, and I am awake.

 

She is a white moonlit gown hung on an open windowpane,

haunting me as silver rays filter through the lace.

Her shadow passes over the floorboards. I look; nothing.

 

My vision of her wavers like a meadow in autumn’s breath.

I can see the wind-waves in the bronze grass, but of her

I find only footprints and crystallized laughter in the soil.

 

She resonates the fibers binding my spirit to sinew,

like a cello played between the final second of a day,

and the first of the next. I watch the second hand,

 

entranced.

Sanctuary

I drove to the border of cloud and watched ghosts dance about its edge like waves on the sand. From here I can see the land bathed in thunderous sunlight; even from the shadows I can see that the world is filled with such beauty. There is a gossamer veil of mist, impermeable and unforgiving, that separates our world from theirs. Toeing the end of shadow, I can sometimes make out the holes in the sky where what lies behind pierces through – stars. I’ve tried to paint them, but white is hard to come by in this land between the highways.

(From the base of the clouds where the ghosts spy, we are probably only a contour cutting its way through mountainside and ocean shore, unalarmed and indiscriminating.) I asked the ghosts where white tones are found, and they indicated the cemetery. But, as I said, that veil is impenetrable; thus I stand in a meadow drenched in hues of grey so that the highway is indistinguishable from the patch of Queen Anne’s Lace to my right. I stand looking into a sun meant for a painter of white. I stand looking into a sun that whispers lines I don’t understand.