Monday, December 10, 2012

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.

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