Aurora
May 10 2024
Long past midnight,
staring into the darkness above.
It seems everyone else in the world
is enthralled by the lightshow
right above their heads.
Illuminating social media,
with spectacular shimmering ribbons
of purple, red, blue, violet and green.
But I stare upwards in envy
at Nothing / Zilch / Nada / Sweet FA!
A fruitless waste of time,
when I could be asleep safe in bed
dreaming of fickle Northern Lights.
Yet as I contemplate
this peaceful moonlit sky,
how blessed it is to be here –
while elsewhere others live in fear
of what the night might bring,
of what fierce light might come,
of what might fall from dark skies.
Storm Kathleen arrived in spring,
purifying with terrifying beauty and power.
Thrashing through trees with wanton abandon,
threatening to wrench roots from the earth,
mischievously shaking magpies from their roosts
hurling them spinning skyward,
Squirrels clinging tightly rocking
to unpredictable saxophonic gusts
that wax and wane,
whipping through bare limbs,
as she shakes awake the waiting buds
singing to them a promise of longer days.
Graffiti-tagging her name in strewn branches,
to write her history in the alphabet of twigs
ripped from fractured trunks,
falling alone to gather together
in random windblown-wood pictograms,
cast down to earth to form esoteric patterns
conjuring images of Chinese characters,
tossed like Mimih Spirit Sticks,
or coppiced Nordic Runes
magically evoking shamanism and divination,
winnowed from living boughs
to join the decomposing teeming leaf-litter.
But there is beauty too in decay –
in the secret mysteries of the saproxylic realm
where death gives birth to new life.
Gifford Savage's poetry has been published in various journals, including The Storms, The Bangor Literary Journal, The New Verse News, Agape Review and previously in the Lothlorien Poetry Journal. He was included in the CAP anthology Across The Threshold and was winner of the Aspects Festival Poetry Slam 2022.
No comments:
Post a Comment