#nationalpoetryday 2015
I thought it would be pure emptiness
When you went to the otherworld
But I went into your room
Just a momentary pause in the day
And I felt it, filling me from feet up
Warm, glowing white light
The purest light a love can offer
And I am forever blessed
In dark days I can dig deep
For the candle you placed there
I shall be forever grateful for it.
Thankyou for the white pure love light
Ailsa
I will walk the beaches very soon, wild and windy as they are
Watch the waves as they crash the pier into quiet submission
Remember the stories of when you were a boy free as a bird
Look at the sun as it drops below the horizon as always
And I will look for you
I will wander the lands I feel your presence beating like a heartbeat
Where the thrumming of the earth burbles like your laughter
And the wind whips around me holding me steadily
Hear stories of adventure you told all from your own mind
I will look for you
Listening and learning your words by heart and tears flowing down
In peaceful solitude I can only think of you
Your voice spoken in dreams or by angels and others
I get used to you not being here, now
I know someday you’ll come to collect me and I have to be patient
Until then, I can do nothing other
Than keep on looking for you
How far do you think the yarn will stretch before it frays and unravels?
Like your fragile balance of the truth you want to believe and cold hard facts
The wonderful phrase of let’s be friends, in time you’ll see
And blame what’s that, because it has not been me!!
Except it has
Whose eyes are you trying to shield from the absolute worst of the truth
I see through you like an old tattered bridal veil, story full of holes
You can only look at yourself as if an uneducated youth
Who couldn’t possibly conceive of their actions turning a person to stone
Except it has almost
Don’t imagine for one second you have the power of a goddess
The images racing through your head I don’t want to imagine at all
They are demented, self worshipping and foretell future distress
I shall have no pleasure in hearing you had an almighty, painful fall
Except one thing is without doubt
The yarns will fray, strings do break
And you will
It’s not a difficult thing to get wrong the feelings game
I could have said I had no connection to you
So very easily
This time last year
Now my heart and head have agreed on something
That doesn’t happen so very often
Suddenly I realised I’d been building a castle of a man
Someone I wanted to see from being a child
Who you are really
Who my head tried to make you
And they are different
Not remotely similar to any notion I had
You were so remote I invented you
Like an imaginary friend
Who I couldn’t measure up to
I have realised I don’t have any measuring up to do
And I can’t and won’t try
Because we both did it you see
Built sand castles and stuck the other atop
Now?
The sea has parted the sand and we are so….
Different, opposite
I accept the terms of the future
That each of us may know the other
Like an acquaintance
Too late for more, family, friendship even
I care, you care
And it has to be left there
I now feel peace towards you.
Ailsa
As each new damsel with flailing arms appears
Worry not fair/dark/whatever you may be maiden
For your own Arthur is waiting , soon to be here
He will give you his own sad sorry songs to show he’s more than equally laden
This knight as you see him is dressed in stolen armour
The dragons breath still hot upon it, is turning it to dust
Just before the scales fall you will see him start to clamber
Those sinking castle walls he built on fake sand, not trust
He will tell you he doesn’t understand why you changed to him
Why your face it fits the shell of rusty frame no more
And your old light and love have grown so very dim
Like the burnt out flame of desire you felt before
You will realise one day he’s trying to build a goddess to worship from afar
So stay distant, true, do not utter your dissent!!
It’s high to reach Arthur’s stay perfect bar
And now you can see the armour all ruined and rent
The woman he worships never was human and frail
She doesn’t have problems and she will never ail
He bows at the altar built as a boy in his head
He kneels down before the gods of the dead
So take flight damsel he cannot save you from your own dragons and fire
You were the solid face of a person of which he tires.
She wandered the forest in the witching hour, a drumbeat in her veins
The tattered dress once of silk and lace hanging in rags on her frame
But this pilgrimage is one to make through the painstaking trek
No-one believes her, but she gives not a care,
They say she imagines things that there’s nobody there
Nodding to themselves and one another about the “silly old woman ” who meets her lover.
She comes to a clearing and begins to dance
Slowly in circles, building up slowly and losing her years
Till the young girl she stops in mid twirl on a carpet of clover
Behind her a light shines over her shoulder of creamy white skin,
And it comes from within the nearest trees
The table is set with a lamp as she turns, a long cloth of moss it’s cover
He’s here, and is serving the food, the wine
To the lady in the emerald silk, with the pearls at her neck
Her spinning took her back to the time he was here before
She’s to go back soon but she knows it’s really and truly just fine
For then they will be together for all of the time
The banquet is finished, lights are dim, she sighs
Quietly hugs him goodnight, no words are exchanged
Once again old, dressed in tattered rags she hobbles to her home
A smile on her face and a wave from her hand
She closes the door and gets ready for bed, shabby dress on a chair
Will she tell anyone of her travel tonight?
This time she thinks it’s my secret, they all think I’m mad
But have no idea what they’ve missed by closing their eyes to the light
ailsacawley 