Re-Surfacing

From the depths of memory,

the wilfully forgotten:

wide suddenly, and full of light, this

window to the past, or

towards the past at least –

the past that soared, then swiftly flew.

Granite could not be harder than this

shore I’m wrecked on. Yet,

the harbour walls I thought I built,

white with age as they are, don’t conceal

sails dancing across the water; never

still, whether tossed or rocked gently.

Fly, then, sweet sails! Memory, turn

seaward at last, with the longing that is ever

seaward, ever returning to this particular shore, this

flying, with the wind behind us … remaining

unbroken after all. I can resist no more. 

Wings, spread! Wings, soar! Fly forever!

An acrostic based on TS Eliot's stirring lines from 'Ash Wednesday':

From the wide window towards the granite shore

The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying

Unbroken wings 

Written for my own prompt at Poets and Storytellers United, for Friday Writings #231: White Sails Flying, where I invite people to be inspired by those lines, and if desired use them in an acrostic. Apologies, everyone! Until I tried it myself – after setting the prompt – I hadn't realised what difficult lines they are to use that way. 

My scenario is fictional, but based vaguely on things in my life: not one specific situation or buried memory, but some loves that didn't last, and a childhood and adolescence spent near water, 'messing about in boats' – though mostly rowboats and motor-boats. (Although much in love with sailing boats always, I never did any real sailing myself except as a passenger.)

Unable Not to Keep Mourning Her Death

(‘Tells with silence the last light breaking’)

Tells –    

utters / informs / relates … and ah, 

what Katherine did was relate

with –    

alongside, in the company of … she was one 

who was never away from, always with

silence –    

absence of noise, deep quiet … she could be 

noisy, loud with laughter, yet in her presence

I found deep peace; we could be quiet together,

needing no words (though, both, workers in words)

the –    

definitive … to define her would take many words

or none; one could write pages of rapturous description,

which would have to include somewhere her laughter, 

her huge capacity for joy – yet wholly fail to capture her

last –    

at last, the end, finality … but there is nothing final about

this long friendship, sisterhood, true understanding, ever

light –    

shining, radiant, illumination, clarity, the light of knowledge 

… she shed light on the hidden; also, alight, lit up our lives

breaking –    

coming apart, fracturing, dividing into pieces … separating 

into past and future, self and other, here and gone, alive / dead

Inspired by a prompt from Laura Bloomsbury, for dVerse: Taking a Fine Line Down.

A word acrostic focusing on definitions of the words chosen. The line, 'tells with silence the last light breaking' is from Dylan Thomas's A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London. (To get the formatting to work on the blog page, I needed to put the words above each verse instead of to the left – which perhaps differentiates it from an acrostic, but I think it works as a poem.)

When the stars are somewhere behind the moodiness of the clouds

When the stars are somewhere behind the moodiness of the clouds

When I wake suddenly from sleep into deep darkness, 

the drawn curtains admitting no glimpse of light

(stars and moon both covered over) for a moment I hope –

'Are you beside me here, was it all a bad dream, are you

somewhere close where I can touch you?' as I reach out. But,

behind the quick joy, the irrational leap in the chest, there come

the cold whispers of truth, shedding a light not of stars – voicing

moodiness, fear, despair, gradually insisting on the hard fact

of loss, of absence, telling me: Your hands in the dark will find only

the illusion of a body in lumpy blankets ... a lie ... an emptiness.

Clouds are not more evanescent than these false, glorious moments.

The title is a phrase written by Sanaa Rizvi. The poem is a word acrostic, each line beginning with a word from this title.

Written for day 3 of Poems in April at 'imaginary garden with real toads': Late night conversations with the Muse.