12 BARS
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 –
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 morning’s 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 ocean’s 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.