The Night Call
The woods are dark
and important with green, restless
with a pushing wind bruising the white
petals of the moonflowers against
the walls of this house I never enter
that stands at the edge of the dream. I'm
not here to come in from the green dark alive
with a canticle of constellations and the wind strumming
soft in the moon-colored strings of my hair but
sometimes I watch the wisp of a dead bishop
rigid in the doorway holding the lantern high
questioning the heretic hours, the faceless rain,
the expanse teeming with life between us
that answers in crickets and owl song
and the giving language of pines
he will never be able to speak.
None of these will tell the secret; that I'm here,
that I'll never come in
to the house filled with traps,
whose convenience of hot and cold
running happiness has leaked
out in sickly anger, leaving that stink
of broken love that clings
to a dead wisp calling,
calling me back to black dreams
I'll never share again.
I'm already gone in the breathy night,
into the green dark, alive.
February 2022
posted for earthweal's
Photos © joyannjones 2-27-2014, manipulated
What a delicious wild read this is, can absolutely slip into that dark green thrumming night that lives among the words - so beautiful written.
ReplyDeleteMy breathing slowed as I read line after line, you have gifted us one your finest. Favorite line ~~ ‘to the house filled with traps, whose convenience of hot and cold running happiness has leaked out in sickly anger.’
ReplyDeleteJoy, this poem is so BEAUTIFUL! Dream-like, the house that you never go in, a poem full of crickets and owl song, with two closing lines that could not be more perfect!
ReplyDeleteThose last three stanzas are stunning, dear. Your poems derived from dreams are nearly always among your most riveting. The "house filled with traps' especially stood out for me, and I applaud the speaker's run for self-preservation and freedom.
ReplyDeleteWonderful! This is super-charged with wild energy, Hedgewitch!
ReplyDeleteWriting poetry of dreams requires a wild thought and a heart's choir of spectral genii, from the papal Marlowe at the door (magnificent image) to all the wronged domestic wraiths harpying a cold hearth. When outside in the green dark all is "breathy" and "alive." That place in my dreams is home to all my worst living and is an apartment in ruins buried too deep in memory. Was just in there last night. Anyway, the mind is wild here, weaving through a hellscape with a happy foot out the door. There's no place like home in the wild. Thanks for bringin' it to earthweal.
ReplyDeleteThanks, B. My pleasure. I'm finding that your 'Wild' series of introspections make for a cruise into my own wild and dark places.
DeleteThe houses we have abandoned continue to haunt us. But there is clarity in the boundaries here.
ReplyDeleteOh, this is a most breathtaking and visceral portrayal of a night's call, and so much more I can only begin to fathom. The metaphors you use are the best I've come across and for that reason, I have to reread your poems like three times! Too many good lines to quote so I pluck these out of the beauty above:
ReplyDelete"the green dark alive
with a canticle of constellations and the wind strumming
soft in the moon-colored strings of my hair but"
<3
"sometimes I watch the wisp of a dead bishop
ReplyDeleterigid in the doorway holding the lantern high
questioning the heretic hours, the faceless rain,"
and the above! It didn't copy across properly. That image of the bishop is so haunting!
Thank you Sunra. I am always interested to see what you respond to in my poems, and I appreciate your comments very much.
Delete