I looked, once,
up into a sky
grey, and milky
white. My mind
spun along
trails of
unconscious
thought,
brief and fleeting
as the zephyr
that occasionally
brushed my face..
my eyes slid shut,
and my lips
curved, into
the smallest of
smiles, as I sat
there, still, empty
...calm, and content,
as the gentle
breath of the
west ruffled
my hair,
gently, and
from my fingers,
dropped a
band of gold,
down, into
the abyss below...
down, as I
stand, and
turning,
walk away
from that place,
and I am
happy,
as I go,
leaving
that
memory of
love,
that place
of
beginnings,
and of
ends,
softly,
as we part,
equals, the
silence,
and I.
At last.
At last...

I sit, staring, all around me
darkness, the shadows of the
night lurk about me, while
the soft sighs of the spirits
of the abyss, of darkness,
of death, of despair, swirl
around me, finding their way
into the depths of my heart,
of my soul...plunging me into
nothingness, and drawing a
grey veil over my eyes...I wander,
lost, and alone...and all is ashes,
and dust, upon the winds and
tides of the currents of Time...
and I am lost..

Dreaming,
the body is
left behind...
and the soul
is cut loose,
to wander
the realms,
that lie beyond
our bodies,
and our lives.

Sleeping,
I dreamed..
and I flew...

My heart,
it strained,
tears ran,
welling
from my
lids, to
track their
way,
down the
lines of my
face.

Of the
affairs of
my love,

Ashes and Dust...

I hear her
speak, her
words, fall
through me,
to land
soundly,
on the singing
land that
is my heart,
as she says
the words,
the blessed
words,
"I love you"

I wake, rising, in the dark
of night. I stare, into the
blackness, and listen to the
quiet, and to her breathing,
soft and shallow, there at my
side.

Her face is pale, as I light
the lamp, hanging at my
side, across from her. Her
hair, red, lies stretched, out
across the sheets, thin and
dull, in the flickering glow.

I blow out, the lamp. I lay
down again, softly beside
her. The tears track their
way down the weathered
grooves in my cheeks, and
fall noiselessly, as I lie there,
sleepless, in the night.

The fire blazes, crackles and snaps,
the women dance around its light,
while the men around, in the dark-
ling shadows, beat the drums to the
song of life.

Flutes sigh their trilling songs,
and strings dance and thrum and
blur, as the fiddle plays its wild
abandon, out, into the currents of
the night.

The wild boar is caught and spit,
its dripping fat, the flames do lick,
and now the call to feast and song,
to mead and meat and legend tall,
under the stars and the hunters
moon!