Balustrade

After a week's worth of outings, I'm glad of my introvert-night. I had a fantastic week, but I needed an eventual unwind, and tonight's learning journey was worth the wait, even with much of it spent following wikipedia trails and researching the last several poet-laureates. Honestly, sometimes the greatest nights are those with candles, books, music, and blankets as soft as dream-clouds.


an anodyne reminder that life boils down
the fault-lines of souls, to a fragile
ash-wooden sacrifice, one story all-told,
whose spiritual timbres creak and groan,
filling the dark eyes of a child on barrow hill -
I see them still, frameless,
no mountains, no forests , no fields balm
the pain written in runneled lines
down the blind boy's fair face
standing before a sudden grave -
for the ocean, and the motion of waves,
how silent the mountains?
to the valleys who bow beneath,
how wise the lofty peaks
the clouds ever drown in violence?
but the mountains be valleys be dust
in the end, back where it always begins
where we begin again, anon -
I greet the rising sun over a city of glass,
and automobiles with their dumb-eyed daffodils
searing through the fog -
above and beyond all the earth, where
lovers and trees neck in the woods,
here, from the oculus of dreams
we follow the railroad ties of sunlight
struggling between grey seams,
illuminating what our ears see:
a high pitched squeal, a soughing through,
laughter
beneath a chestnut tree high as yggdrasil
in the girl-child's toffee-gaze
joy, I know thee well.
And caught between these siren-stares
I step precariously along the balustrade
one stare at a time.