Whispers
He rides the winds
of my dreams
clusters of clouds
carrying sounds
of drums
and fire
lightening and rain,
the winds caress his absence
where storms
once hid
in the belly
of a snow
covered forest,
the winds calm
covered and full
quiet dark
hovers now -
the dreams are gone,
his words
whispered
in still nights
when candles
are extinguished
in my windows.
Late December Snow Squall: Fast Forward to Old Age
Another year is drawing to a close,
Yet in this gnawing Winter's shredding jaws
I've cut the dead-heads from my blood-red rose.
Tonight, under the squall's abrading claws,
Torn by the frozen shots of wind blown snow,
A dark elm creaks and cracks with not a pause,
And frozen boughs, iced up, assume the glow
Of twisted bones flayed, pressed against cold sky:
They gnarl and moan, and the wild, shrill winds blow
Sharp flakes, while heavy sleet pelts eye and ear,
And squinting eyelids, lashes locked in frost,
Are sealed in sharp salt of a gelid tear,
And I, grown stiff in layers of frosty crust,
Remain, a solitary, snowbound ghost.
It reminds me of a Hardy poem, "His immortality." If he wanted to preserve him I wonder why he didn't name him. But back to the point. The subject remains with you in memory. Inevitable in the case of a shattering loss, to the extent memory functions. The closing lines remind me of the closing of one of my own ditties, which I might as well tack on:
Tomorrow Some New Star
Upon the stars tonight
appears some care,
some stricken pulse, as blurs the silent pool
or wavers in some ancient's vacant stare;
Say they were borne there
by a love proved cruel,
drawn as by some brute hypnotic power
out into fields of deep night's lonely hell;
as vigil lights
are wrenched in their low hour,
something not yet lulled by time's dim spell
seems waked in them; which heart's fresh longings
rise tonight,
and reach up there to wring
perhaps some life from those emerging eyes
so almost moved in their frail glimmering?
Tomorrow some new star must yearn,
as when
one heart grows still, and one turns blind to men.
The candles extinguished in the windows triggered that remembrance.