The Stars Wore Halos
My dear Theo,
With my own eyes the blue of night, I look out my window
before the edge of dawn and am greeted by the morning star
of Venus glowing in a halo of virgin white. Oh how the vision
of this makes me suffer and you know too well that I cannot
rest until I free these internal emotions to canvas. It is in painting
that the bars come off the windows.
I stand here in the room I call my studio, yet before I begin to
paint I feel I must describe to you the beauty that this starry night
has bestowed upon my senses and commit it to memory.
Let me tell you how a celestial map is spread out before me, helping
me navigate the darkness, absorbing my spirit into the cosmos. How
the stars glow like little suns, their eyes looking into mine. Stars so
close, I feel I can reach out, touch them and lick their sugary sparkles
from my fingertips.
It is as if the stars are blooming, illuminating the darkness of my
mind, letting me see down corridors I didn't know existed. A crescent
moon, curved like my missing ear, hangs in the corner listening.
Down below, the village is slumbering except for a few windows
glowing with lights acting like beacons, guiding the lost souls home.
The church steeple, tall enough to pierce holes in the night sky, lets
the stars shine through. A cypress tree rises like a dark flame moving
with the breath of God.
Oh yes dear brother, I can see the winds swirling, blue tidal waves of
energy, with emotions like my own thoughts, ever turbulent. I feel like I
am one with this painting before I have even started, knowing as I do,
life and death, darkness and light and the vastness of the universe.
Now I must say goodbye, pick up my brush and go into this starry night.
Oh dear Theo, how I want to believe it will not be another failure for I see
such hope in these stars.
Ever yours,
Vincent
(after Van Gogh's painting Starry Night)
The Future In My Hands
I met her on a forest trail, a woman
of grey hair and a crooked walk who
held the light of the universe in her
deep blue eyes. The kind of eyes that
looked right through me and knew
things about me that I had yet to learn.
She held my palm in her hand and
let her fingers touch the lines in my
skin as if reading braille. She began
to mumble to herself as she closed
her eyes and swayed with the breath
of the trees. She told me of the
things to come if I did not learn how
to read the messages that were
etched in my hands by the ancient
ones who gathered at my birth.
She told me my destiny had been
foretold many years ago when
women were known as seers and
knew how to interpret the dreams.
I watched as her eyes darkened and
saw my reflection and knew that my
own future was waiting in the palm
of my hands.
FATE
It was the crone who told me
poetry was my fate.
She sent crows to pluck words
from my skull and claws to
open my wounds.
She told me when snowflakes
fly like moths between my
legs it would be time to feed
a slice of orange to the setting
sun and empty my throat of
its river.
The Hour of Dreams
It is time.
The hour between the screech of the owl
and the howl of the coyotes.
The time when moonbeams creep silently
across my bed and lift me from slumber
to travel the night sky.
Passing a star I reach for it to guide me
through the shifting clouds and the sea
of black and watch as the luminous
architectural bones of the heavens are
revealed to me in a flash of lightning.
As I drift further into my dreams I am
standing before a stained glass window
where my ancient life is spread before
me and I smell the shores of Scotland.
Entering the next realm I am greeted by
travellers from my recent past and I taste
the colour of loss and sorrow on my tongue
and watch as storm clouds gather and
break.
Quickly spinning through time I enter
the moment of now and wonder at the
words I write and the well of things I
have to say before I am whooshed
through another portal to a distant past.
I adjust my vision and notice there is
a fine line between life and death. It
is a time where ghosts tend to others
as we once tended to them. A place
where the broken have been formed into
wings of angels. A place where we
walk between two worlds as one.
An Inventory of Small Wonder Dreams
Each day carries with it an inventory of
the little things that I do not want to forget.
Things like the tiny acorns that grow into
majestic oaks and the speckled brown eggs
in the nest we found on the side of the bird
feeder. Last night it was the pop up glow
of the fireflies that lit the sky. From inside
I watch the orb spider wait patiently to feel
the pull of a thread as her unsuspecting meal
moves closer. Bees buzz like drones through
the garden filling their baskets and tickling
the flowers as the birds sing the songs that
were born of them thousands of years ago.
I follow a newly hatched swallowtail butterfly
as she unfurls her wings against the brick of
the house. As the sun settles in for the night
I reach out to touch the stars and call these
small wonders into my dreams.
I need to read what you write Karen. Thank-you!
ReplyDelete