BLACK PANTHER

 

She lurked at first at vision’s edge like

a quenching shadow shape,

stealthy as the dark moon, loud as

a black sun. A sigh in my soul

merged with my mind to form the close

that births thought,

when sudden she engulfed its space,

gliding into its hush

over a formless bridge, her eyes of hues

that seemed prescient, divinipotent,

gleaming like apertures of hope.

 

Her suppleness mesmerised; her dimly lit

fell rippled, erupting into

coins of misted glow and sprays

of beaten silver as she settled on the

ground like a silhouette of clouds.

Her tones swallowed me from within like

a trance, its euphony like

liquid velvet laced with flurries,

veined with old gold, enlarging my senses,

incepting an awareness

of unknown device and provenance.

“Do you yearn for metaphors, pristine, sharp

as stars and achingly poetic?

What human sound could render the tongue

of the wild world, the unsounded

depths of Nature’s odes and cosmic design?

You immerse yourself

in unavailing mortal toil, intractable as the

lines you aspire to tame,

embellishing or compellingly reducing,

that the ineffable may assume

meaning in some unfelt cranny of your spirit.”

 

“What verb could frame the force of lightning

coursing vein-like through

blighted heavens, limn the grace of slender

streams and sereins like

solacing voices; the craft of breezes shirring

the lake; the joyful surrender

of early spring’s veil of ice yielding to warmth,

spreading like melted diamonds

beneath blue glass? What articulation could

spell the unsullied bliss of

glutted bees imbibing from blossom chalices,

trace the majesty of the

eagle’s arc as he masters the sky?”

 

“Life is a lesser reflection of the realm of your

dreams, of which words lend

only a distant echo, feebly flamed, evanescing

like blooms of dust.

Light asserts its own grammar, breath its own

language. Names shall never

precede insight and being. Therefore, seek

the spark in your darkness!

Speak and sing from its deepest marrow!

Be made vivid that you may

make vivid, that you may see far within,

from within, where all is timeless, deathless!”

 

“Release each season, unbridle every phrase!

Heed your inner volvelle

upon the threshold between the known and

the unknown. The wilderness dreams;

its rhythm lives in your body, its colours tint

your vision. Fall, for the ground

is inevitable and possessed of an odd beauty!

Embrace every becoming as a

dawn of creation, that you may relive and

relearn discovery. Rise from Earth

like a tree to tell the land’s story!”

 

Thus exhorting, she faded like a flight

of ravens into twilight.

 

© 2021 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

 

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