Twelve brazen bars, one frozen lock! Confined, sublime, an ancient Roc endures inside a barren cage, her catacomb in sundown sage.
Of former days there is no trace except displays of fallen grace β Twelve dreams, abiding in her place, are free, inhabit yawning space:
12 DREAMS
... of wings unfurled, and seething eyes that dredge the depths of dawning skies, devining clouds that cling below, once ice, dissolved in morningβs glow;
... of clutching winds that carry free above an anguished leaden sea, dispersing dust of distant stars midst chunks of chain in slave bazaars;
... of swooping to a silent shore to perch beside the oceanβs roar, at last to feel the sobbing breeze message the leaves of rooted trees;
... of stalking strays and twilight tramps within the fog of lighthouse lamps that blink forlorn through caldron nights in search of shades of errant Kites;
... of darkling vast deserted lands, with shadowed stones on windswept sands, where ghosts of Moorish maidens lost disgorge faint groans in mourning frost;
... of blotting out the bloated moon while feathers beat a banshee tune and glimmers dance and prance aglow upon a pearly pale plateau;
... of tasting cool torrential rains, beyond the realm of binding chains, and sipping freedom they exude in quite drops of solitude;
... of vanquishing a galley crew aboard a ship in midnight dew, beneath the pierce of seagulls' screams that mock the strands of scarlet streams;
... of sating once an aching craw with tearing beak, with ripping claw, and echoed by an eldritch screech while feasting on abandoned beach;
... of restive thoughts and weary wings that drift on haze in smoky rings, obscured within the opal shroud of her resemblance in the crowd;
... of croaking caws in broken rhyme in winter woe, in summer clime, while building nests of sundown sage beyond outside a barren cage.