thesongofsaturn

[thesongofsaturn]

the arbiter’s embrace

there’s a space in the darkness of a room at night

that, in the folds, an eye looks out of

a hungry predator of most precarious dreams

that, in truth, afeared of tooth and

nail and claw comes into being, then falls away

as morning dew.

a whirlwind of fire scaling the side

of an old house, nearly lived in,

sitting in a photograph of phantasms.

and to the morning light, the scrying bird calls

and in the depth of her song, sits

an eye, unlidded, open.

the dawnlight brings the cat called frost,

her toes forlorn upon a memory,

a footprint in the grass,

and she, both killed and kept by her curiosity

is ushered away in the

sound of a collar bell, her captured cousin’s fancy,

and returns her into sleep.

and in that rest,

an eye.

the moons a butterfly

kept in a glass box of secrets with

a lock of death’s hair and a gathering of baby’s breath;

the final feast of a child’s nightmare.

and to the cold, cold chill, a mouse of daybreak

falls again into the clutches of shadow,

and its death, another eye

a gaze that dreams and is dreamed of

only lies

and in those lies

sits me

“beware of fire, woman of words”

the cowbird surely sings,

“for you are just a paper doll

held up on paper strings.”