Midsummer in an Orchard

Paint an orchard washed with dusk,
And children running merrily
To hang their lanterns from the trees,
Swathed in silks and heavy musk
of green, and silver velvet- Puck!
These laughing imps could only be
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mustardseed!
These fleeting fellows hang for Luck,
A thousand quivering points of light,
Guarded by the haunting cry
of Faeries lost into the night.

Ayuma? Just a thought.

That night he dreamt of Ayuma. They were back at home, nestled amongst the potatoes on the Red Star listening to the clack of the wheels on the line. Sylvan felt cool air tickling him and opened his eyes, then sat up. She was standing at the door, watching the dark rush past on its hurried way, the inks folding in on each other, swirling and eddying in the wake of the train. With her nightdress furled like smoke around her pale ankles, she was a vision, some pallid creature come to taunt, torment him. It was only when she turned to smile at him, that he realised she was no longer his. But by then she was gone, dove like a champion and rolling into the inky black, unfurled. Sylvan howled, and threw himself after her, tumbling, gnashing, sand in his hair, his eyes, grating on his skin. He fell for what seemed eternity, and dared not open his eyes to see how far he had to come, aware only of the sand that bit and etched his skin, rolling in swathes around him. When finally, he had slowed and rubbed the grit out of his eyes, the Red Star screaming, stretching away high above him till it was nothing but a speck of whistling light, beyond, he spotted Ayuma. The desert was paradoxically bright, a white silver sand that begged moonlight where there was none. The moon had waxed wane, and the water beyond the shore was black as black, and still, stretched tight as silk over its depths, strewn with thousands of points of wavering, white light. Ayuma was standing with her back to him, her feet buried in the sand. In her night dress, she was a spectre, moving almost imperceptibly with the silver around her. She began to walk, fluidly, pointing her toes and sliding them into the dune, and to laugh, too. Sylvan wept to hear her laugh, its clear note trickling from her lips. It was so easy to believe in that laugh. Once, he would have crossed chasms, swum oceans for it. He rose, padding quietly after her, to the waters’ edge. She kept walking, watching her feet disappear into the black water. “oh, how lovely” she exclaimed, “lovely, lovely.” She turned around and fixed her gaze on Sylvan. There was no horizon, only sky and hoary sand and reflections in the dark. “Come in” she said to him “It’s not cold”. And he would have done, but for her laughing eyes. He wanted to say, you are leaving us, and you haven’t a care about it. How can you be so thoughtless? But he hadn’t the words to say it. Instead he watched as she backed away from him, slowly submerging herself in the darkness, until she was holding her chin above the water. She smiled slowly, and shook her head. “lovely.” He still did not speak, but never once broke her gaze, until her cold, laughing eyes were all he could see, and she disappeared into the sky. He sat at the edge for a little while yet, and watched, as one by one, the stars went out.

Sylvan awoke and looked down at his pallid creature, sleeping, breathing quietly next to him. He wondered what it was that she was leaving.

***

A place for thoughts

I've decided to create a blog in order to share both finished and unfinished writings, for whoever is interested.  So here's a few to start, this one I wrote for an online competition, and tried to imagine the nature of the bond created between mother and child, at birth.


First Impressions

I watched as he slithered out
His womb-wet reptilian flesh
Screeching and writhing, like some insidious changeling
Come up from the Deep.
And I thought, did we make that?
But swathed, processed, rid of my blood
He was handed to me.
And the thing that struck me
Wasn’t his chubby toes
Or sticky pink fingers coiled around mine
It wasn’t his warm gurgle singing bliss through my veins
Or even the soft gossamer thatch on his head
He weighed less than a bag of sugar and
Milked my love with his eyes.
It was his newness, this creature, so fragrant
With choice, had come from me.
And on the morning, memory still forming
I pressed him to my cheek and told him
That I was his.



In writing this piece, I thought about our misconceptions of the wilderness that surrounds us and our vulnerability within it.

The state of wilderness

Standing on the precipice to another life,
Wind warps and sheaves around my bones,
Bland white storm leaves me blind but one thing is clear,
As I am buffeted, chided from my bower,
I think, I am the mistress of this here,
Of my here and my now.

The sky and its mirror; glimmer and quiver
Dance their own silver two-step
And I, gliding somewhere in between
That tumultuous vanity, I am not lost.
Even here I am in control.

Can you say the same?
That whilst you wallow in those bright reflections,
And play with fortune in the tides,
You will not lose your mind?



And finally, a work in progress. My first effort at rhythm/ narrative :) Enjoy.


Ayuma's King

On Ayuma’s birth a fire-king,

Twisted sky into a string

And pledged that every moon she grew,

“A bead of blue I’ll bring to you”

And so around her neck he wrought

That chain of atmospheric sorts,

And footing lightly ‘cross the dunes,

To Ayuma, he bid, adieu.

So when the sun rise in the morn

Gave powdered blue to winter’s dawn

Furled as smoke in finest tone

Aurora reachéd from her throne.

With palest hand she sheared a dream

Of blessing unto marbled sheen;

And on the first moon fire-king sent

A bead of purest coiled intent.

 

For the second, fire-king found
By creeping after keening sounds
Bright sapphire-mages in the act
Of plucking jewels from silver’d flax