Three Poems by Susan Dale

Spellbound

Under an arch___ and pausing

to feel the air thick in evocations

Desires, dreams, delusions

What?

And so____ a journey deep

into archives of wonder

I hear all around___ and behind a corner

and feel ripples across my shoulders

But time has devoured the script

Spellbound, I wait

And listen to whispers

‘You were here once’

Was it a bridge I crossed?

A door I opened

Who was with me then?

When?

A phrase of broken words

A note or two levitating me

to the music of spires and spheres

And in the broken space of time

Someone in a passing car

gazes out at me with eyes

reaching out of time to breach

the now with the then

But is gone on wheels

rolling down a lonely road

Leaving behind a wonder

returned to the unknown

It breaths

I try to catch it

But my heart rushes ahead of my feet

Both come to crossroads

quiet as sleep

And leave shadows and memories

To grapple with time

  

　

The Healing Hours
 

When we set about to sever us

My symbols of shock

Met your trampled cries

Together, our poison words

Spit raw bone furies

I flew off with broken wing

And sacrificed pride

To hide in woodland nest

And nurse my wounds

You covered your stone heart

With the eyelids of night

We shivered in the driving rain

To feel the claws of fate

Held in cold-fisted time

Our memories fell into

The avalanches that covered us

with memories

Down a avenue of broken time

We limped

From the cloistered dark

You, into circles of light

I, through labyrinths and mazes

Through tangled brambles

Into a night of blazing meteors

My cinder heart

Smoking in gray ashes

Back into the tattered fabric of time, we came

Time sewn with threads of tears

Back to the scars

Running the full length of our days

Ah, the scents and tastes

The harmonies and textures

Of remembering

Ah, the smoky atmosphere of tomorrow

The silver waves and breaking tides

The healing hours of time

　

　

 

 

Yesterday’s Empty Space
 

The wild wings in some spring

Some yesterday

singing spring

Singing April’s restless winds

I, in pink felt coat

hair caught in wind-wings

Afternoon winds blowing about

the decayed leaves

left from winter’s

white romance

when we were us

A winter of

snow dreams on my windowpanes

I, west on the walk

of steps climbing to the moon

You, east

of thirst to a stream

But when winds screeched rain squalls

and shouted shadows

I remembered your stone heart

stone words

You dwelling on my fickle heart

roaming ways

Came a fugitive moment of grace

half visions in wide scopes

One image leading to another

The gauntlet laid

Could we meet in the middle?

of a chasm of armored stars

Or climb tendrils wrapping

around tomorrow?

But only our eyes met

to see spaces filled with duplicitous lights

Tomorrows on winged flights
So many miles apart

 

Susan’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Tryst 3, Word Salad, Pens On Fire, Ken *Again, Hackwriters, Feathered Flounder, and Penwood Review. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.