Half-spun heart

Half-spun heart

- -

Where do I start?

Drifting, wandering my mind apart

As contemplation takes its toll

The desperate search within my soul

To grab a piece of art.

--

Drifting down in endless seas

The ocean Possibilities

The edge of darkness in my mind:

Take me there where once before

I knocked against the silken door,

Was bade enter and in the trove

I beheld the Muse, sat in the grove,

Her hair a gentle green and woven

In along the feet of cloven

Mirth, Her lovers, but there I stood

An outsider, until I felt the hood

Of all my thoughts fall back away

As they have earlier just today

When then your title bid me stay

And write you here with pleas.

- -

Time spills out its river hand

And takes me down through promised lands

And dances cold feet along

The bony spine I have provided

Without aim or purpose guided--

Destiny, Her cup has glided

Over upon its own accord

- -

Drown me in stars

Lift up my hands and cast them farther than my mind has gone

Grant my voice the lyrical song

Against the backdrop of all the years

I cannot articulate now

- -

You came so easily once before

When my mind shut off and my voice spoke more

Of your voice in my mind, your hand o’er eye,

Your kiss at my ear guiding heart into light,

And grant me again that musical ten,

The lyrics of wishes and dreams on their ends,

The spring of the children, their laughter like rosaries

Their eyes caught in sunshine of summertime greeneries

Twisting the root and the stem of the bumblebees

Dripping into autumn through the folds of Her hair

The river-red runs rose-blasted and fair

The kiss of crimson at the nape of my neck

A collar of fingers of exquisite feeling

Of heat dying with leaves as they fall into seas

Of winter-held icecaps the seamen venture to

Crested higher than God’s mounds but all white, never blue,

The seasons are turning and smiling in eyes

Of the richness divine so I must divert mine

And walk back through the door

To my consciousness again.

- -

But against its wood paneling

I must press my ear

And hear ticking, ever ticking,

Ever repeating

Ever repeating

Ever stealing my ear

And my eye and my tongue

And these lily-white fingers to struggle with one

Little word little phrase little mind with such haze

Won’t you grant me the tune of your song?

But the clock of the Muse

And Her laughter’s long hues

And the spreading grass dews

All abound underfoot

As the door blasts away

In that land I call dreaming

So I fall off to play

At simple poetry gleaming

And ask Her “take hold

Of this foolish affair!”

And cast my head upward

Without thought without care

Let consciousness die

And the Muse take Her share

Ever ticking, ever glowing

Ever repeating, ever knowing

Ever fathered in the depths of me

Ever mothered in my ovary

Ever-grown child so carefree

Ever ticking, this clock, this hellbound race fought

Against mortality and thoughts crowding their way

Into the crown of accomplishment, ruin the day

Of my Muse and my triumph, casting away

All the thoughts and the words, tumbling

Jumbling

Rumbling

Fumbling

Stumbling down like a stream in the valley

Of the cavern of what lies in my skull

- -

A breath

- -

Ever repeating

Ever repeating

A phrase and few words

A laughter and a meaning

A sigh and a breath

A kiss and a calming

And with the circle closing

The nighttime truly rising

The words charge me with knowing

All the faces of their groaning

All the messages of meaning

All the symbols of their preening

All the chanting of their canting and the calamity of owning

Each phrase, each thought, each soft-strung harp

Of the Muse, sitting and waiting

Ever waiting, ever ticking

Ever yearning

Ever learning

Ever churning, ever earning

Ever burning

In my half-spun heart.