RECKONING

What force inclined your flame
toward the next stretch

of Eternity, sister, 

setting you upon the course to

the fateful culmination 

of an unfathomable plan?

When did you mount that unseen

tide that would bear

you to shores beyond knowing?

What tempest impaired

your earthly Bridge,

rendered its trestles fragile,

fashioned your casket from your

own inner Spring?

At what moment did you take your

leave of Life, sister? 

Did you preside over your passing,

over each step, discarding

belief, spurning lucid thought?

Did I hear a subdued parting in your

voice that seemed farther 

each day, a tacit farewell in words

falling away, in whispers

that echo still, and stab the breath

from my being.

Yes, you grew into sorrow, for smiles

sat as strangers upon your face,

as Summer in the snow.

Your last breaths you bestowed upon

your beloved roses, 

for they flourished even as you faded.

Did you glow brightest with life,

ere you surrendered to death?

Did Darkness beckon, sister,

or Light?

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: AN ELEGY

Source: www.liveinternet.ru

Artist: Frederic Leighton

FLAME

What realm bears Springtide's spark, 

the still Muse who weaves 

the Aether's prayers of quiet into

verses of Stars? I sought her within,

amid a sea of memories.

No grace awaited nor inspiration sated 

in thickening greenwoods replete 

with dreams, 
aglow with imminent blossoming,
their contentment voiced
in the silken rustle of early violets, 
in sounds of awakening
and rebirth, in the soil's rapture.

A boon unbidden flowed through
a breach in the faraway blue,
a solitary seed of elemental Fire
that with a whisper burst 
into blooms of flame,
soothing as the very Stream that
nourishes their roots.
Was this Wonder,
fecund fundament and fiery forge
of truest Knowing and Wisdom?

Naught else could enthral clouds
upon their rain-ward trail,
for the airy parade seemed to stop
transfixed as fleece
sewn into the early Spring sky.
Upon its camber, breezes melodised;
the lark's strains
shone ever brighter, bidding Eos tarry 
at Apollo's Gates,
that a despairing seeker might
gather her hopeful hues.

Path and Goal met upon this Bridge
betwixt Earth and Elysium,
its image burned into the lake's
liquid turquoise mirror,
its import imprinted upon its waves,
its murmur ever caressing the waters,
even as its lucent expanse
dissolved in Time's ocean, leaving its
Light, Voice and Shape
in the eye of every heart and soul.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: DAWN OF HOPE
Source: tumblr.com
Artist: Daniel Gerhartz

A PROMISE OF SKY

Do you look upon my fragileness, 

great Sentinel of the skies,

at these eyes raised heavenward,

drinking of aery cyan oceans,

worshipping their tides till naught

remains of their hues

but a sprinkling of mauve mist and

turquoise jewels upon

twilight's countenance?

Aye, I am a wilful trespasser in your

limitless azure domain, 

brazen as Prometheus pilfering 

Elysium's restoring Blue,

for to quench the rage that ceaseless

rends my innards as your forbear

did the wily Titan's liver.

Do you smite me with your golden

gaze, as I crave your wings?

Majestic Guardian, do not wish 

torment upon one who shall never

know repose even as all Earth sleeps.

Nyx and Selene, ink and silver,

mingle upon the waters,

their ripples speaking the language

of air and light, of flow and flight.

Nature perceives my spirit's unrest

this Night; Mother bids me

cast off my shell, ascend through a 

heliotrope dark into

an all-embracing expanse

of beryl Silence and cerulean Light.

Upon Eos' rays shall I descend

to the bed of violets at my window,

to a promise of sky.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image source: www.pinterest.com

QUEST

I am a grain of sand seeking the desert,
a feather seeking a wing.

I was born into the vaporous realm that

binds the soil to the ether,

yet, I am a child of earth and blood,

thirsting for the very brick walls

and black roots that grazed and rent 

my flesh and spirit.

The darkness of a thousand blighted 

births weights my feet,

a cruel blessing, that I may not squander

the morsel of Light that

would sustain me, for the journey is long

and I would not hasten Time.

Nay, I would learn the momentum of this

nameless flow,

an animating force of non-love impelling

a sunless existence,

a non-life, a mode not of my choosing.

Aye, mother, I embark upon

a search mysterious even to myself,

my impost at each Gate

upon the sacred path wrought from pain 

of flight from it,

aspiring to barter my eyes - your eyes -

for Vision, for redemption.

I must traverse this lightless terrain

toward a luminous axis,

toward the peduncle of the Cosmic Bloom,

where I could no more discern

the space between heights and depths.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image source: twitter.com

Artist: Samy Charnine

CONFLUENCE

Words rain upon my tongue,

upon its unbending 

muteness meet their demise.

Tomorrow is but a

shadow waiting to take shape,

as a gust alive preceding

the wounded swallow.

I make a futile clutch at the 

sounds of early Spring,

at the glimmering green breath

that parts the earth to

meet the God. 

I invoke the dark brown depths

that birthed the verdant flame,

the Flow that waters

The Tree of Life, its ripples and

currents etched

in soil and stone, upon spirits

and skies.

The forest does not sing this Day,

the Sacred Oak holds

the remnant of birdsong

in its ancient heart of light and

dark circles.

I am a waterless influent, 

Great River, drinking deep of 

cascades of voices

straining across oceans of Time,

that shower over

withered stalks and green alike.

Blessed respite,

mystical insight,

at once fleeting and prolonged,

retreat into the Light, 

as the Hours convene.

I cease to seek words in worlds,

as the hands of the

celestial clock meet in prayer.

Nay, I must seek the world within

each Word - Light, Life, Flow,

Confluence.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: HANDS OF TIME

Source: fineartamerica.com

Artist: Andrew Judd

ETERNAL

I hear the warming land breathe

through the glowing Dawn.

Whimsical wind chimes hail 

wispy wraiths,

silver strands and white paths

echoing distant deep blue gyres.

My heart twirls upon 

childhood's cherished pathways,

with fallen leaves across the

flagstone walk airy genii

crowned with petal wreaths.

Here, far from an affectless world,

all would know eternal Love.

Upon Her skies I trace

the precession of Life's brilliant 

Celestial Pole,

Elysium's own vortex of Light,

cradle of the spark that kindles the

flame in the loam.

I, one of a sea of segmented spirits,

seeker of ages past, 

collector of questions, am lofted into

the ether upon Her winds.

In Her realm, words and starlight

build my spine,

pivot and anchor of my earthly circle

that shall remain rosy

with pulsing blood and awe, 

though the rest of my corpse change

into drab, fallow dust. 

I, one of Love's staffage, would map

the trajectory of Her hour.

Shall this Day be a poem, Aphrodite?

Would patterns and Beauty

worthy of your altar emerge from

my marrow and tears?

My doubts I lay to rest, great goddess.

I shall trust my memories of Truth.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: VENUS

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Artist: Henri-Pierre Picou

OBLIVION

Into a propitious battle I march,

invoking saints and sibyls,

assured of blessed vanquishment.

Ruination would not befall,

nor ignominy trail me;

I shall traverse silver-gold plains of

a depurating death

into a higher nascence,

surrendering shackles of inscience,

as Light stabs my Eye.

Astral drums proclaim

my sacred bloodletting, the pain of 

a birthbed of thorns

lifting my being from disquiet

into the sanctum of the blazing blue

beam that cleaves

the shell of darkness enclosing

my spirit, that it may breathe

the atoms of mystics, 

their visions of Truth and Beauty that

prevail as tremulations

in the ether. My dreams of oblivion 

I shall consign to starlit pyres,

my languor to the rich muteness

of eternal shadows.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: DELPHIC SIBYL

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Artist: Michelangelo

MYSTERIUM

My graceless, unlearned palms cradle

a wrinkled white testament

to your journey, infolded as a nestling 

cleaving to its own feeble warmth.

I would will my roseate pulse into its

weightless curves and branches, 

decipher the Great Cartographer's 

handiwork that links 

your pathway to the Tree of Life.

I no more perceive the scars that recast

this implement of unfettered

rapture into one of voiceless restraint;

did fading lines and nodes

consume them with your breath?

Did you translate them onto parchment

and canvas, as you minimalised

your universes into words and vignettes,

seeking meaning in illusions,

setting Beauty free,

a gesture of detachment, sacred,

intimate as prayer?

Metaphors come alive through dead years,

your bequest to me,

your dreams and visions indelibly wrought

into my texture.

I shall immerse my spirit in the River of Life

that chronicles your days and nights

in a semi-secret script, esoteric knowledge,

twilight its sole adornment. 

What do you hold now in your fluttering

fingers, as Night swallows

the last light in your eyes, leading you

beyond earthly skies?

Commend these threads to us who would

tinge them in our Summers' vats.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: STUDY OF HANDS

Source: www.wikiart.org

Artist: Leonardo da Vinci

JOURNEY V

The mind of the senses measures Time,

seconds and minutes raining

hapless syllables and images in a dream,

in a dying world we seek to command.

Could breaths mark Time's course?

Does the air of Earth quaver in harmony

with the asomatous realm

of Origins and Conclusions that births

spirits from nothingness,

that thirsts to know the Light?

My heartbeats claimed the lucid wildness

of a newborn soul, weaving it

into a snare of blood, bone and warmth.

And I must unravel this fabric, scour its

interstices for the elemental pulse 

that hears the unspoken, 

speaks the unheard. Would I discern the 

music that evades me,

the primordial evocation that is

the tremor of the soul's thanksgiving?

Would it remain unfathomable,

mystical, a shadow of the transcendence

my highest being knew?

Voice and thought traverse upon the sage's

layered chanting, imploding 

into a profound inner violet-blue vastness.

The Word of Creation shines,

its soundless urging echoing through fibres

and spaces of my being.

"Dismember your pride, all that enshrouds

your essence. This human journey is

but a feast of illusion, yet, a stepping stone

to elevation through awareness.

Tread my eternal Path to Truth and Beauty,

divesting yourself of selfhood.

Let every falling fragment of your hull chime

your approach toward my abode,

that your kernel may glow with my Light."

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: Fußsohlen eines Apostels
Source: www.wikiart.org
Artist: Albrecht Dürer 

SPIRIT OF IMBOLC

I am Spring's infant heartbeat echoing

through Winter's retreating steps.

I am the Great Fire's secret gaze upon

His awakening Love,

the first flush of warmth in

His deepening Gold.

I am the rebirth of Creation's yearning, 

of hope's sublime scent

swaddling somnolent snowdrops. 

I am the Great Mother's smile

gliding upon the Season's golden wing,

anon to alight as a blossom 

upon Brighid's crown.

I am the thrum of Her spinning wheel,

the first green length wound

upon Her spindle.

I am the spark that flies upon Her arrow,

telling wordless tales

of the unnameable, stirring your wonder

anew, that you may meet

Nature with devotion in your heart and

gratitude upon your lips.

I am the light that disquiets every kernel,

invoking transformation and growing.

I am the peace that calms your questing,

questioning mind, bidding you tread

to the Great Wheel's rhythm.

I am the sacred Moment that enfolds all

who breathe in accord with Life.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: EARTH MOTHER

Source: www.liveinternet.ru

Artist: Edward Burne-Jones