Survivors

Survivors

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Winter Stars


by Steve King
©  2012  All rights reserved


The sky is low with winter clouds.
I cannot see the stars;
my upturned face
at least may touch the winter sky.

I was told each star
is an unclaimed wish:
the heavens’ brilliance
a mosaic pavement
marking paths for derelict desire.

Such promises mean little.
Wishes are more free than stars—
there are longings to outweigh
a universe of light.

I have always held a star apart.
Should I see another one tonight
I know where I would ground its waiting wish.

Soon the earth will shift its heavy airs,
just the way your guarded eyes do change
to capture the next mood.

Then will the winter sky alight…

And then might old desires at last intrude.

Then shall wishes rain from winter stars.


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Self Portraiture


by Steve King
© 2005
All rights reserved


I would need a volume to remind myself:
I have loosed all, despite the best intent,
except some given sense of this moment.
Life is too long for the span and spur
of quaint ideals and self-defining force,
faint memories of bold designs
that onetime served to fashion out a course.

I would need an echo to assist recall
even of my solemn
and least random of words:
so long speaking with myself,
I puzzle what it is
that all those others might have heard…
I would plumb the lyric in each dark nuance
and hear old promises remade.
Minor harmonics, left long unsung,
might singly play their parts, now undismayed.

I would need the dreaming of a thousand nights,
winding close upon the ancient core.
There are secret provinces
carved in the heart’s domain,
and passageways to well-forgotten realms
where longings war with unrequited claims;
where best and worst may languish intertwined;
where every stillborn orison,
forever is enjoined.

There would be new wonderings
amid the monuments
of long-forgiven loves
now lingering in their twilight of regret.
I would gild anew the shape
of that less reflective age,
and dredge beneath old shadows
for talismans to strew upon
this now impatient page.

How will I learn to see anew
and intimate of every thing,
of half forgot imaginings
that call in wild archaic tongues?
Or murmur in respecting tones
to render true the softening song
that unsought sudden sadness brings?
I might wake to those dreamings evermore,
and never apprehend a passion
that compelled before.

It is a distant odyssey
to circumambulate one’s past,
and tend to sundry leavings
that were never meant to last.
Still, one treads a landscape
that may never be renounced.
It is a scene alit by vagrant fires,
where brilliance and full darkness do conspire.
And so, the eye does quickly tire…

So… I will need your vision to abet.
Now you must be my ready surrogate
to render out the meanings I invent,
to ratify this sum of vague intent.
I shall speak at large to your desire,
and levy all my thoughts as you require.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Rushes


by Steve King
© 2012
All rights reserved


Your body bends upon young grass,
a lightness in your limbs.
How may I keep from promising?

You search for heavens
in unfolding clouds.
Portents.
A sign.

The rushes sigh in the least breeze,
and speak all things to you.

You, the silent one who waits,
while I sigh with the rushes;
while I am left to gather my desire
in its own words.

As the young grass
drinks the sun,
so you absorb my promises
‘til I am emptied.

Now flown are all the words,
no portents,
no sign to show a way,
and dumb the rushes when I pause to hear.