SPRING DAY

I returned home a stranger to strangers;

my tongue turned with insatiate tides,

my words dissolved into the briny infinity

that claimed your breath,

these lightless depths I took unto myself

that scoured from within

into un-living. An ocean of clouds surges

still in my eyes with ghost flames

and ragged rainbows, a maelstrom destiny

burned onto our maps.

A mere mote renamed existence,

jolted from Blossom to unseen Blossom

past the whirligig of time

with a hollow in its heart dense, immense,

alive as a cluster of colliding universes.

I listed and lurched through

waking dreams, through light and voids

it left for me to fill

with meaning I could no longer find,

for my soul sailed waves

of dying air and waning pulse.

 

I swallowed the sun and devoured the stars,

yet the dark hunger in my cells

remains unstill, echoing with footsteps

and voices from a realm whose

miles and bounds I do not know,

though I lingered long at its invisible doors.

I do not remember whence

my path tended this Blossom or what forces

flutter as fragile pennants

in my trembling hands, merely that they

were sparged with tears

before they met the half-light’s dew.

I walk along the shore

to your eternity, measuring each pace

as though fulfilling an ancient rite

of divination to learn our fate.

“Yesterday is blind; tomorrow’s woods bloom

sparser.” My senses strain to capture

some lost arcanum.

Yet what could I perceive? I, a human sliver,

the past’s future

and the future’s past, whose vision could

no more tell dapples from blots,

now stand before you or your memory amid a

vastness that amplifies our un-being,

yet I could not tell who is the more absent.

 

You remain unmoving, suspended in a Season

by petals at the waters’ edge.

What would you have me learn, you who glow

as an Angel whose name and truth

alone endure? Do you weary of my sorrow?

Does my spirit’s surrender stale?

You lift your gaze into the warming Blue

in wonder and supplication,

welcoming a sunlit ribbon of seagulls on wing.

Yes, I must image us anew

as mirror and reflection,

parted awhile, though never apart.

My arms stutter a cry, the “Stay!” my lips dare

not shape, as you merge

into brightening April’s sunshine page.

I shall write you into every cherry spirant and

blossom note, for I now pledge to sing

lost flowers into Spring.

 

© 2021 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image 1: twitter.com (via @ItalianARMY_BTS)

Image 2: pinterest.com (Credit to original artist @odettemh)