Traveler
By Greg Patrick
"Never forget what you are, for
surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your
weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.” ―
George R.R. Martin, Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones
Call no man “stranger” who knows his own
heart.
The caravan fires burn like pyres to the
day’s dreams, red dreams in which one looks so intently
as to be lost in the silence of one’s own
thoughts as each strays from the song played before all.
The ashen daydreams brought by each one
like an offering to cast to the flames and betrayed in a
gleaming behind the depth of eyes alone. Not
a reflection of the circle’s fire like starlight
microcosmed but one’s own nomad fire, as
much birth right as the road, which burns so long as
heart beats to its own desire and in time
with one’s own song and story.
A path concourse to fate, like walking
against the fall of rain and man.
Like an endearment bespoke by gaze alone
heard across a crowded room.
Though the guitarist begins the old songs,
each is soloist to their own song.
Like the first arachnid chords of a dream
catcher strung to ensnare an escaping dream.
Journeyer of one’s own path and stranger
at threshold, strangers called to the firesong like stray
stories at the harpist’s beckoning touch
at the string.
Dreams rekindled like embers; dormant
memories awoken even as sleep flutters at the fire-cast
eyes.
Fire screams red with shadow like an
ancestral memory and we remember why we travel the
storm-swept roads in the footsteps of
ghosts, another “trail of tears.”
Eyes close to dream like a harpist’s eyes
shutting to all but the gleam that answers the stars in
duet, not from the eyes but unfathomed
depths of one’s heart, so lost and yet found again in
words and song.
Before dreams like a dark horse awaiting
that has thrown each successive rider and champion the
nomad approaches with but one before
expectant eyes.
Knowing there are roads that once
undertaken cannot be walked again as the same
person nor retrace one’s steps and really
go back.
In pursuit of aspiration like a falcon at
the wrist, the falconer’s gaze uplifted
and fixed farther than he can see. And the
falcon’s far gaze locks on the huntsman’s eyes, a look
that says.
“Let me go huntsman for that, I cannot
bear you up after me anymore than weight of earth or sky
can be borne. Let us both go.”
Earthbound one seeks new worlds from the
shore. Horizon and hills pivoted away from with the
same movement by which one turns by the
fire in the age-old dance. Ageless exile becomes
wanderlust.
Homeland like castles built palatially of
clouds by the eyes. Expressive gaze beholding and
bespoke a visual poetry. Memory crying out
to lost dreams like a shepherd to a strayed flock
as night befalls and past revisits.
Way by Starlight
By Greg Patrick
I wish I could
have seen it as it was and you with me…before trees were felled to immortalise
words on pages. It
would not have been about legacy or about memory but the moment in times
granted the
children of the desert…time measured not to clocks but the tempo of heartbeats
like
sacred drumbeats
throbbing in the soul.
Seen it when your
sigh was the only music in the air and the duet of laughter’s echoes chased
each other like
spirits of the glade, through the rocks, which was carved with scenes of chase
and
harvest.
Before the
cloudless sky was blemished by planes and the valleys and hills dissected with
roads.
Before it was
known that to construct is to destroy.
When the shrill
cry of an eagle like a heraldry announcing the arrival of a princess seemed a
song
in tribute to you.
I wish I could have been there before men were expected to bow to crowns and
the raven hair
crowned beauty in natural waves like keepsake of night that the sun could not
banish, like a
treasured memory of an evening under the stars always on the mind.
Uncut, unshorn, a
princess’s crown un-usurped by an imposed way from across the sea.
when it was no
crime to born free…No zoos no prisons of bars, only the way back through the
desert lit in the
stars. When there were no laws, only a smile that could not be done justice to and
everything seemed
right, nature in balance like stars suspended in the heights
to light the nomad
homeward, suspended as timelessly as a moment granted mortals in the
skipping of a
heart’s beat, like the moment an elder raises a hand for a drummer to cease and
says” listen….”
That moment of a
skipped heartbeat when smile like the muse meeting the poet, when vision in
an artist’s eyes cannot
help but be a masterpiece’s reflection when the mirage becomes more
than that.
I wish I could
have been there with you, when a necklace of shells in a tribute of tribes of
the sea
and the carvings
of the north where the sky burns…All seemed an inadequacy to the light borne
in the eyes the
soulful gleam of the wise, of the vision of light behind dark eyes.
I wish I could
have seen it and you with me when “freedom” was never used in these
lands, when that word
really meant something.
When poetry was magic,
and magic was the smile that was poetry in song so light on the wind
that man could
hear it as the wolf heard the snow hare’s step, hound could hear the drumbeat
in
his master’s
chest.
When hair did not
have to be shorn, the wolf did not have to be caged, and we were heirs not to
castles but the
stone shaped by ages, heirs to the moment. When none were kings because one
did not have to be
when the dreams were ruled by a smile that was lost in the dimming light till
it
were the stars
alone that held vigil and it was natural to speak in song and legends.
When “freedom” was
not a word abused by many with blood on their hands. When it existed
like a poem
without needs of a page, when it was defined by the feeling of the wind in the
hair
and in the heart’s
caress of a smile that was silence a deafening silence when a whisper was a
roar and one realised
there was a river in the background and its sparkle had been dimmed
by the eyes of one
like a poem written against the skyline.
In the natural
silence that sang with dreams, silence set to music…when no hat was laid out by
a
soloist to collect
coins from the passer-by but a look from a brave all but said let us linger here
by
that song and the
stars will gather in celestial gold for you like a tribute cast down from the
heights.
I could never take
the absence of the stars amid the city lights for granted amid the parade of
strangers past me
but I never felt more stranger to the concept of radiance then when the smile
that proved heresy
to faith in the city’s ways.
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