A Magazine of Many Arts

She once was
Winter’s bride to be,
but she gave her heart
to Autumn.

She knows
Winter’s wrath,
his bitter-cold breath,
knows she is bound.

Winter was not pleased
to hear of her betrayal.
So with one icy blast,
he tore a hole in her throat
& then blew out her eyes.

She longs for
sweet September mornings,
sleeping lazy, sleeping late,
the smell of Autumn’s skin,
his dear touch just before
he entered her
with the bounty of
all his knowing.

illustration by Enrique Meseguer, darksouls1 on Pixabay.

Against the face of night, a white moon hoves
into view; a hostage, bound and fevered
by a titan’s gravitic caress.

Responding to him, trammeled
by a fellow captive’s jealous chains,
her inner ice melts, yielding
to the sweet torment
of gravity’s exquisite duress,
bending and quivering,
buckling and shivering.

Four parallel scars rake down her belly,
left by a celestial tiger’s claws;
she bleeds ice-mist in torrents,
trailing veils of crane-down behind her,
shattered wings.

She wraps herself in her mist, pressing snow
to her breast to conceal her ravaged, pockmarked skin,
bleeds out her essence to the void,
heedless in her ecstasy,
leaving a trail of frozen tears behind.

Those feathers that do return to her,
as she’s slowly devoured by her lover’s
ungentle embrace,
fall back to her skin like knives of cold stone.

Self-destroying, self-creating;
blinded by her rapture,
she whirls around her beloved,
entranced; while within her laboring core,
dragons struggle to birth themselves
through the caesarian cuts
left by the tiger’s surgical claws;
strive to shatter the shell of their mother,
their ice-white egg.

The heat within her heart
that engendered them,
will, in time, spell their dissolution,
when she gives herself up to her lover entirely,
dissolves herself and spreads out
as a final shimmering ring
of transitory ice.

And so, with each pass
of the orbital dance,
the universe pauses,
waiting to see
what kind of fabulous monsters
have been born.

On this flimsy, sea-sodden paper
I write your favorite words,
spell the color of your eyes,
the feel of your lips on mine.
But the wind won’t tell me
where you are.

I was an angry thing,
forgetful of my vows,
unwary of my passion.
Now I would call you back,
forgive you your transgressions,
as I ask forgiveness for my own lapse.
One sin should not excuse
the tempest I unleashed.

On what far shore does your body lie wrecked?
The winds won’t tell me.
I would blow you home to my arms,
let you weep repentance there;
a weeping man’s alive
and capable of redemption.

Sand will blow in upon the waves,
in years restore the shore in a new shape.
The leafless trees will bud.
Survivors will re-people the isles
that shuddered at my tantrum.
But how shall I rebuild?

They say when a wind-catcher violates
her truce with the gods
the winds keep silent forever.
They do not lie.
I strain and hear nothing,
just the creak and strain of
broken branches,
the groan of leaning timbers,
the scattering of someone’s unmoored photographs.