13:51

 

Clock hands spanned a frozen umbel

in the silent air atremble

with their foregone momentum.

 

Minutes, vivid with desire for motion,

revenged like fireships

through fleets of memories

flailing on the dead sea of my mind,

their sailmaker and windcaller.

 

“Tick-tock, tick-tock”, its soft steel

snagged the arc

of the summer breeze that sought to

write its song on my skin.

 

I wandered between yesterday and

tomorrow’s wake,

carpeting the greening earth with my

parched veins, their blood

long since yielded to the interred hour

that passed before it could pass.

 

Its fruit incarnate in words that linger

as thought shadows

on my page, rimming the chill white

face that marked its broken

circle like a wreath.

 

And I must raise a litany of meaning

from the waterless colourless

amid yellow wagtails that once filled

my paling, failing heart

with their wingbeats.

 

To be perceived by you was freedom.

You glow in the half-light

as a spellmaker or liminal god

of the borderland between breath

and surrender.

 

We defy the eternal law of equals and

opposites; that hour is not lost to us,

though we are lost to it.

 

Light touches deeper than dark.

Such incompleteness is the new order.

 

© 2021 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

 

Image: twitter.com