Lead River of Crippling Stars
21st Century
Against a lead river
Of crippling stars,
My lungs shocked shut
At scent of death,
I followed parallel strands
Of luminous tremor
While the old man flew linear
On soft clouds of ochre.
I saw unfurled in smooth slate
A bridge across virgin winter,
Where witches bound my legs to earth
And reached to bar King's Acre.
I slowed to a magic
And glared at the spark
Of dreamers traveling still
In heaven's house of sleep.
I saw tomorrow
Rise and roar in tin cages
Like delirious horses
In spring steeple chases.
I held heavy
The fate of all ephemera,
Panicked with discovery,
Fearing an end.
But vision within vision
Was no less a lie,
For tonight,
As dawn threatened
Its merciful elder
With the tragic amnesia
Of its oblique ember,
A thief stole from the Queen's garden,
A murderer answered
To shimmering stars,
And a lone palm of silk frond
Swayed Zen slow in the firmament.
DayPoems Poem No. 1685
<a href="http://www.daypoems.net/poems/1685.html">Lead River of Crippling Stars by Patrick Boyd</a>
The DayPoems Poetry Collection, www.daypoems.net
Timothy Bovee, editor
Poets Poems