Monday, February 19, 2024

Ides of March

 






Ides of March


What does one do on a cold and snowy path

After the sun’s warmth has left and the reindeer 

Must follow the flocks of geese flying to the southern hemisphere.


There are reasons to believe that there is an aftermath

To be found beneath the blankets of snow

Where the ground is swollen with life and limb;


There is beauty, even in the decaying process,  ‘though so grim.

Praying at the row and to names that no one really knows

And then, one moves away quietly and ever so gently


With and through the detritus of age - in tow.

The path there and back obscured by fog.

Now and then the woods rail so intently.


The wolves gather at the edge of the bog

Sniffing – smelling the air for a scent 

Beware of the calling scritch of bete-noire dogs!


They will howl and snarl for life to relent.

Hide - be very still or flee; set in flight

For this day is not the time to carry on the fight.


Why does one walk alone on a cold and snowy day;

Is there some untold truth in the love of honey?

Some touching moments before the wintry bite slays.


The silent forest where the woods hold pray

For sacrifices and forgiveness by djinnis 

While Delphyne songs enchant all into a final rend. 


The long dark tree lines glimmer under the winter’s moon

It is uncertain whether all his poems were lost there - too soon

Before they were understood to portend


How phantasmic beasts track him by the light of the moon

Across the clearing of vagueness;

And confront him with the starken face of death; 


A maquillage lineament of heinousness.

His heart slowed with each deep breath

As his mind twisted and retwisted in harrow;


His incongruent senses were lost in the narrow

Glen of mystery and of a vanishing point

Where the timpani sounds faintly as their last resound.


For the handsome prince is but a thin vagabond

Lost again to the vail of wonder;

Still seeking a place to rest and sleep.    


Why does one wonder out on a cold snowy path?

After prayers are said at the gravesite of strangeness;

While mordant halos spin in counter of the antithetical arrow.


And the tracking eyes, along the tree line, follow

Closely - waiting patiently; their hunger will speak the final say

Of where his soul’s flight and repertory will be found.


The appall is not that one may fall or crawl

But more a fear that one may not be near or here at all;

The plight is to fight or take flight from the dying of the light.


Are life and death nothing more than perceptions;

Ideas formed in a cave and painted into images of rhyme.

The old sundial, at the entrance, a hyperbola in time?


The dark universe reformed by Kafkaesque inceptions

Plasmonic deviations; ephemeral and ephemera of pretensions.

The latent edges of fear slowly emersed from stolid eyes:


Livid skies loom quietly across the vale waiting the storm front

To consume life; as hungry wolves howl for their brotherly ties. 


Why does one never return from a cold and snowy day?