of The Inn of Stormy Nights
If you
want for light
for
day for night.
If you
wish for land
for
sea for sand.
Sink
feet deep.
Let
snow hug you
to
sleep.
In
this dark and cold embrace.
When
all stars are erased.
Find
futures inside fire.
Where
for light for day
for
night, for all conspire.
To
bring together a last daydream,
a dervish in deep moonbeams.
If I wander too far, leave a light in the window.
Let it burn and burn until I return
upon the wing of puffins.
I’ll come riding, on a squall of cherry blossoms.
I’ll come visit you, grandfather, with a reed basket stuffed with nuts
and pine boughs to decorate your home.
The squirrel who lives in your attic will chirp and chatter.
The deer will scatter and the bear will groan.
But you, dear grandfather, can you sing me home?
I miss your song, fiddled over the drum beat of tides.
I miss you stories, whispered between the cracked voice of hearth fire.
Though far I’ve been, to foggy moors and crumbled castles,
I miss the mysteries of home.
I sent you a letter, by humpback. Have you gotten it?
If I wander to far, leave the light in the window.
Through the winter fog and sheets of rain.
I will find my way home again.
Listen for the flutter of wings.
Look. If you only listen, step quiet and stop. Peer through the shutters, out into the night.
There exist worlds only wished for from the tips of fingers.
Can you find one?
If you do, step light, look far and near or you might find yourself falling through a crack you never meant to touch.
Here’s to all the new adventures to those far, wide and wondrous places of the heart, mind and universe! If I had the world Alone. I would chase the caribou across icy shields. If I had the world Alone. I would travel with the trumpet swan, eating fireflies. If I had the world Alone. I …
Above the clouds, with the stars, sits a lighthouse full of books which wrap around the winding staircase until the tower’s peak hits the ceiling of the universe.
At this peak is a light which shines through a window. A long trail of gold which glitters brighter than any pot at a rainbow’s end. Those are just illusions you know. But this light, this light is real.
When you look out your window, in the corner of your house, or glance at the lamp at the end of the street, that light you see, flashing from the edge of your eye, that is the trail which tracks from every planet in every galaxy, right back to the small window at the peak of the lighthouse.
So when you greet the new year, the new day, the new hour, look up above the clouds, with the stars. You might just spot the lighthouse.
In every history lived a little girl or boy who found a book.
It’s pages crinkled and curled over, hugging the faded ink scrawled across and spilled into a story. A story which rose up around the child in the form of warriors and airships, kraken and unicorns, castles and cliff edges where wit and rapier crossed.
Deep in the curve of caverns and under the sunny seas, these children leapt into exploration. Because of curiousity.
Until one day, they found a loose scrap of paper. Pink maybe or blue, one of the sticky note squares their parents used to decorate the refrigerator with.
These squares told them what they needed to do. It gave them a quest toward fame and fortune. Go to school it said. Get a job it said. Find a partner it said. Get a house it said. Have children it said.
The children went to school. They left their books under a pile of reality. Delving into new worlds, still clinging to curiousity.
Until one day someone said these children spent too much time imagining. They were lazy. They did not know how to work. Even if they wore suits and fetched coffees for bosses. They only had thoughts and no skills.
The children turned away from these square people who lived when imagination was not a universe of pixels stringing paperback to backpacks.
They returned to their books. They built an airship, they fashioned a compass and they found a map. They took to the skies and disappeared in the clouds, among the million flocks of birds with the same brown wings.
Their history passed down to friends who built airships and a few family members too but caught, between the curve of each word settled the quiet meow of a cat, as it fell asleep next to another book.
She came riding to the sound of high noon, stirring a sleeping barn owl and sent the inn in an uproar. Her rapier hilt flashed against the wheat field as thigh high boots clumped over the rain muddied path. As the wind ran through leaves, her voice commanded.
“I am here on the King’s business.”
A lyric poem written in celebration of stories. The image which inspired this piece came together thanks to various images from creative commons of flickr.
I value that which I can create with my own two hands, so this is a rare piece. However, I sometimes find as much value in creating new images or stories from pieces of others. A remix of sorts.
In this, I refer to both literal stories and visual stories, told as oral tales in ancient days or photographed and formed by people today.
Far in the misted west, lingering in the deep of the moon, hear the call of the white wolves, whispering to the loons.
Long ago and past the fields, full of thundering deer, sits the silverwood in faerie song that echoes across a lake’s mirror.
If you hear the voice of adventure, don’t forget your hat. Wear it high and proud in sun song, but when the rain storms down, beware the thundercat.
Listen to the wind as it circles empty branches, a herald to the snow that comes, crashing a wave of avalanches.
In the deep night of spring, ‘round circles of stone, hear the call of the folk, it speaks to the stories in every bone.
ARR~Moony
Whosoever held the kingdom’s key, stood at the crest of the cliff, where sea meets sky. The world dropped into a palm and sat in the skin of temptation, ready ever and always, to fly up to Polaris in the shape of a wren. Cut from the same string as the pen which scratched the lettered prison and pressed the wax seal over the kingdom’s key.