Part I - Ribbons of Silk

I saw the source of river Alph
Atop a broken lava flow
Lost in the ancient monuments
Of lovers blood from hearts once woken,
Now frozen it its tumbled train
And nestled on the basalt slopes,
It sleeps its thousand year refrain
Till promises within the earth are spoken
And boil from its cauldron once again.

A secret show of subtle form,
Its bed mere twist and curl of stone
Is filled with brittle whitened sticks
In sandy cracks, on flint strewn plate,
Where barely one brief season past
A flood of glacial waters churned,
A thirsty urn that filled at last,
Now bakes on rock hewn oven's slate
Dry as a kiln-bleached bone.

Those who've seen this small respite
Of waters stolen from above,
Know well the dance of river daughters
Who come to spend an afternoon's delight.
Moving through the light and shade
In ways made young with sounds of laughter,
Till something brushes past the sentinels
Of stone that line the nearer height.
A darker, troubled love.

Sometimes fertile, sometimes parched,
A fleeting thing that comes and goes
Is but an accidental shape,
A fold of hem that draped that way on seating,
And served until some other impulse chose
To prove no cave immeasurable has fixed this place,
Nor left a trace of once enchanted meetings.
Yet, in that lifeless rock remains a compass rose;
Drawn to its ancient source, a silken ribbon flows.

Part II - Rivers of Stone

Three cocks' combs guard a rocky crest,
In bands of red and gold a warning's made.
Though what it might intend evades all reason,
The heart need only look where it's been led
To know the maker's colors tell of wedded blood
Risen from the mud of prehistoric seasons
And rained upon an earthly marriage bed
Such tears no human scale ever weighed.

Below the distant climbing crags
The shadows paint in dull gray mane
A blasted wall of towered ruin,
Misshapen pines and withered shoot;
Where massive parts were hacked and thrown,
And nature filled its heat-forged seams
With darkened dreams in cracked-rock root
That sealed Night within her tomb
In eerie separation from the day.

Higher still, another steppe,
A place ten meters wide or more,
Where huge stone tablets came and met
Upon its strange, chaotic floor.
Across that stage, a rough stone dais stood,
Of such proportion one could hardly speak;
There, on its peak, if stone were said to brood,
Rose the shadow of a faceless face,
Split from crown to throat in some forgotten war.

On the crest, a stony river flows,
Weaving its way from the mountain's loom
Down the slopes of a blood-stained bridal gown,
Now bleached in the naked heat of day,
It spreads its fine mosaic tears upon her hem
And spans a gaping wound of canyon space.
Above, the grace of Nature's glacial diadem;
Below, I kept my watch and fixed its rocky way
Till it began its long descent and disappeared
into a northern flume.

Part III - Portals of Dream

Earth turns upon the spindle of a dream
Star-swept thoughts of shapeless yearning,
That wake where only sleep had been,
And long ago Eternity was kept.
There, her mother danced desire's rite
To tease the strange geometry of hours;
Till, deep within the fold of Night,
Times incandescent seed was spent,
Heaven wept a tear-stained sky
beneath the nascent light.

Long after Time resumed
And Night wore scars of fiery birth,
One daughter mantled fair a molten core,
Where anxious Dream was led,
To spin the hours into days, the void to dust,
and songs of lust in earthen beds.
Then sibling light revealed moist desire,
And naked heat lay bare a salten shore,
And fresh tears fell to earth.

Where dream can't follow, memories play
Upon the stage of imagery;
There day was racked and tempest raged,
A moment's pain was slowly gauged;
Its ages stretched while eons turned
Upon that fearsome wheel of Intent.
Till Earth was rent and water burned,
Magma burst from cavern's vent
To cut the steamy Lethe's way.

When I woke the sun was gone,
The desert ground, now wrapped

              in icy moon's embrace,
              the place where ceremony drowned,

To reign the night with silver thread,
And so its dark abyss was spanned;
From stony keep to distant portal
where lover's once had lain,
in mountain dreams that Nature crowned,
where mortals were forever banned.

Part IV - Mountain Child

The children come to search the sky
beneath the mountain's silent spire,
While wizards check their calendars
And signs are read and meanings guessed;
And magic promises are whispered
Amidst the gathering of crones,
Marking sacred zones with paint and lizards,
counting the veins in shriveled breasts,
While celebrants prepare the evening fires

Some will dance and some will pray
And in the shadows some will weep,
Though they know not what compels their tears,
Nor why they've come, nor what they seek,
But gaze beyond the evening song,
Beyond the crowd in dimming light,
And know the Night holds something wrong
On the slopes where dull winds shriek
The troubling of a lover's sleep.

In villages, around that place ,
Where children skurf and skate and learn,
Surveyors' flags mark virgin rock,
While plans are laid to mock that other gyre;
Its grid grown even smaller in a tightening noose
Of frightened thoughts, of mountains made for hire,
And desecration built of small decisions,
Of compromises made in sulfurous air
That gird the place where water burns.

Tho' shops are closed and lights are dimmed,
And time and space but daily cares gone by,
Their dreams be small things shuttered in.
Here, far above the fires and the lights,
Where icy moon and frozen slopes would meet,
The merest rock fall caused my blood to freeze,
And countless centuries of sleep beneath my feet
Foretold the wakening of imprisoned Night,
A dark, against a darkening sky.

Epilogue - Nimune's Song

Set aside your cares, contrary one,
Trust not the priests that wingless hopes have bent,
Nor heed the crones' advice, nor wizards' call.
Listen to the sounds of Earth,
Hear her tell the secrets of delight,
On sacred ground when all was still
Where she first felt the stirring of the Night
To fill her want with Dream's desire,
And make of that, in stone and blood and tear,
a sacrament.

August 25, 1987, Mt. Shasta, CA
© 1987, 2010 red slider. All rights reserved.

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