Survivors

Survivors

Monday, November 26, 2012

Unfinished Lines


by Steve King
©  2012
All rights reserved


Death shall punctuate our lines,
granting prospect of new song
to a readied empty space
waiting to enfold new life.

But new life is isolate,
only briefly in its place:
inconstant, unmemoried,
just a sketch wrought all too quick,
no right of rhythm or rhyme
inhering in its leavings;
no entrée to high design
save by good fortune, perhaps,
or if that final hard mark
should fall on a random grace,
sanctifying that last trace.

Punctuation without care
to how that next waiting space
might serve then to rectify
forgone lines of yesterdays—
so many acts left undone,
and so much nearly complete,
all so suddenly effaced,
silent in unfinished lines.

'Unfinished Lines' to be shared Tuesday at dVersepoets Open Link Night.  Come Join!
http://dversepoets.com/


Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Harvest


(c) Steve King 2012
All rights reserved


The first chore in the morning
was to gather our tomatoes.
Night bestowed new color:
each fruit in waiting
blushed in its awakening,
yielding easy to the hand.

Footprints in heavy dew
attended on my solitude,
and I would smile
imagining that one had followed:
you.

Something like a dream,
to find a way
through the in-between
of starshine and dawn.
There is a poet’s word
for that kind of light,
but needless—
I had already seen.

And I would linger,
waiting while you dreamed,
pausing in my pleasantries,
harvesting the fruits of morning light,
while you clung to our shadows,
cleaving to the bounty of the night.


Monday, November 5, 2012

Seeing Stars


©  Steve King
All rights reserved


She closed her eyes to find a dream again.
Tears stung like the sea she a-drowning.
She would recall the window,
and the looking far to darkness,
and to distant stars.
Her eyes felt so small,
surely she was at fault, too,
for seeing nothingness that side of stars;
sure that emptiness
was part of her, too…

She disappeared as clouds closed on the night,
body nothingness in grip of shadow,
mind a lens for somnolent senses,
and for sharp aches that gather to the soul.
She could yet stir to wonder:
‘Is this how dreams are lost?’
Empty window and the dampened stars—
There would be that clinging memory
when waves of heartache
came to wash her soul,
over time smoothing sharp breaks
to a plainer anguish.
Empty window and the dampened stars:
irrelevant blind view
she tried so to ignore
yet strained to see.

Another moment and it all sank in.
Much as she thought the wash of dread
must lave across the leaving dreams
of the condemned that one last morning,
sudden waking to brightness and the brimming bladder 
and normalcy and all else except for...

All so sudden
all like a madness
all at once like that fear.


She blushed in her pain to think of the condemned:
There could be no otherness for them,
no beckoning twilight future
to suit a need as time might yet allow,
no delicate and balming rationales,
‘til rationales surrendered to the end of expectation;
‘til memory itself was finally gone.

Not at all like death or what she imagined.
How was one to know?
For what had death to show?
The heart might cease, yet still not fail to beat.

Not like death, seeming a dream at the far other end.
Only love, and best to lose it young;
superfluous innocence
that would not stay nor even bear the course:
better than at age in the grip of dread,
as old love, ancient and familiar,
drowned in a stew of cataracts and catarrhs.

Catacombs.

Mausoleums at morningtide.

All desire and dream,
she sang through darkness
heard the song, not the singing
knew she must be dreaming
or else be a dream,
even as she felt him move,
felt him hard in her dreaming world,
even as he stayed leaving,
hearing her song in the singing dark,
not then even knowing his musing lark.