WORD III

 

A child imagined words as valleys

where time exists as

pure sound.

Ideals, idylls, into which she would

sink, assured of corbels

and ballast.

 

They now seem like florets the wind

whips away,

a welcome splash of light…

…or an old attic door creaking on its

rusty hinges clamouring

for the ease

of unctuous, sinuous tones.

 

A blank leaf before silent ineptitude is

gravity, an inexorable force

pulling words from me

when neither will

nor spirit warm to inspiration.

 

They slide down my brow, gentle as a

landslip, yet constant

and compelling as the clock’s hands

holding my heart,

heedless of my rhythm’s 

timescale and fear-locked fingers.

 

I wrap their living filigree around vision

and feeling like flesh around souls.

I float on my tears,

stupefied

with the heady belief of creation,

bedevilled and anguished

by a tyrant Muse.

 

Benumbed. By hubris.

 

Stripped down to skin and bone.

 

Ridden with the relief and bereftness of

giving birth.

 

Illuminated.

 

Unsated.

 

For words gaze with a knowing that rises

like a star beyond all they say.

I peel back their layers,

reach into their grain that feeds essence,

stumble through strangleholds

and morasses

toward the core of unspoken sense that

awakens more than is perceived.

 

What language could trace the mystical

path of meaning into the marrow

of being?

 

Are words not more than thought and

sentiment made manifest?

 

By what higher art do import and truth

in tongues yet unknown,

unheard, shake the blood into stillness

or newer flowing;

split the continuum of time to render

me more real to myself?

 

I must return to the child,

become the page…let the Strand ravel…

or unravel in its spaces.

Life wings as a blink.

I pass into a different Eye.

 

© 2021 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

 

Image: CHILD WITH A DOVE

Artist: Pablo Picasso

Source: twitter.com