Fount
Stars wheel in the water,
giddy whirl of green flame
blazing at prow and stern,
sentinels burning sea
of darkness visible
but do not hide your fires,
lone light in this abyss
where compass needles spin,
cloying cyst where I float
adrift on shining dark
waves, lost in hail-mingled
star frost, sending senses
out across silent glass
of confused reflections:
forces that bind, create
order, hidden in green
glimmer far above, or
below – why am I blind
to definitions? Blur
on all sides, the herald
of absence, relative
to nothing, unanchored,
by words, words, words
enveloped, the light my
sedative when cold burns
and sightless I dream on,
revolving in emerald.
Sometimes fragments surface
above the tide of time
and memory, darkness
receding, revealing
the old city where once
I felt firm ground beneath
my feet: smell of flaxseed,
tobacco in sharp air,
Clyde shine in red sun,
where I would while away
wet noons reading Sappho,
raindrops inking sandstone,
clock ticking into dark
carbolic eves of spirit haze
waiting for some long-lost
ship to bear me across
the beckoning waves.
No more, nevermore quoth
who knows, as I chase some
spectre I cannot perceive,
yellow bricks crumbling fast
to gold dust with footprints
that whirl and taunt, shadows
coalescing in deceiving ice
mist where demons await
one false move, one trick step.
And yet I snatch that fog
stuff that dreams are made on,
tortured by longing ache
for some Dionysian
sublime, flash of searing
inspiration burning
hot in ocean stars,
but like Zeno’s arrow
it outstrips my reach each
time, unforgiving, sick.
But now, legs, lungs tiring,
shore far behind in mists
matted with wraiths of storms
expectant, I cannot
tread much longer, here clocks
stop, life sinks, bleeding stars
the final spotlight, weights
clamped around numb ankles
with coins for Charon.
What made me look up
will forever remain
my most burning question,
all I remember here
is her voice, rupturing
darkness far above,
a blade through cloud and fear,
a quest calling courage to arms,
slicing the silence into song.
Her mace fell, shattering the ice –
I did not know the spell,
yet my soul was quaking
in recognition, spoiled
shield frosting and blooming
before erasing flames
of void – that coiled absence
waiting to spring from blank
broiling depths of space sundered.
And so I looked to stars,
not blinking in waters
but blazing in sky vault,
and with gold dust billowed
dream stuff, inside the fires.
They were never ahead,
hidden beyond strained sight,
brick-bound gaze, no – look up,
rise now on gold dust wings
straight to starlight core,
furnace of creation
forging words that will live
as lore as long as raised
voices give them a stage,
shining in living song.
See there jade trails of pure
inspiration, the fierce
unchanging light beneath
mask of material
decay, where language burns,
love and passion and rage,
tales born in starhearts, dust
that is fount of all form,
unknowable till known
in music of stories,
where voices raise the sails
and their starships soar on.
