The Sweet Tree Seed

The Sweet Tree Seed


I
On a raspberry red road that ran razor-like for miles,
Until your feet got dazed and grazed by many cruel turns,
A little girl was stumbling, sobbing, seeking all the while
For a gush of grass, a splash of green on which to bathe her burns.

The way had not been willing much (if willing roads can be)
To play at host or toast the treks of funny folk with eyes.
It much preferred to wreck the pace of those who folly free.
And take its sport escorting this ephemeral demise.

On each side a tide of stones, a grinder milling sand.
Engulfed the world and hurled out grey and gritty storms.
A shifting space which left no trace of what was once the land.
Sulphur slaked with crimson, random, refusing to take form.

Amongst the stones clicked chalky bones of animal and man.
Fingers snapping and the flapping of fallen, failed wings.
Adventures dashed on crashing rocks, clapping of lost hands.
Or just freak fate of fools whose mystics promised other things.

The maid's given name was Heavenshade, a pretty epitaph.
Her home a moment hazy long before her pain arose.
Her feet two stony objects fallen subject to the path.
And two thirsty wounds withdrew from seeing far beyond her nose.

Revelations, reckonings and fancies beyond fact
Were her schooling, always pooling truth and half-forgotten lore.
History buffed with memory until what resulted lacked
Kinship with the stains of time or candor anymore.

Memories of mushroom, bat and other nightly fare.
Of dew, virtues of starlight and lunar attributes.
Of close of day, the time to say a sweet nocturnal prayer.
Lest the sun should settle and commit himself to roots.

Centuries, seconds, epochs, trices, seasons, spans and spells.
Cycles, gyres and spirals, whirligigs and days
Had gone the way of flaccid clocks and chronographic bells.
Until evidence of transience was smothered in the haze.

II
The Moon had lost her anchor and had ambled off in space.
Limply like a candle, flickering with fear.
A busted-booted schoolgirl weeping in disgrace.
Face fixed fiercely forward in a push to hide her tears.

Then the Sun had waxed magnificent, tragically wide.
And his mantle started swelling, massive, unconstrained.
The Moon, a burning exile with no pretense of pride,
Swooned, wounded, out of orbit, new trajectories attained.

"Know my impact by my absence", she warned upon her way.
And reflected that "my role here has been woefully miscast
Now you'll know of seabeds and of cactus and of clay
And make your love in daylight till your breed becomes the past".

"Too long your turgid throng of tears has lapped against my flame.
"Award the mighty murderer a horn to drink his fill.
"The dawn of dawns, all lines re-drawn, perdition, I proclaim.
"Solicit all that sates the tongue, lament all liquids spilled"

"Encrypt your odes with ravelled codes, sing not to the sky,
"Receive his light with feigned delight, bend as flattered yews.
"Waste not time with travelled rhyme, a new school rises nigh.
"You'll find behind your paradigm a quite indifferent muse".

And something more below the roar of celebrating day;
A pallid shrug of effort, a short yet plashing air
Fell upon diverted ears, alerting none to weigh
A seed of hope against a fecund desert of despair.

III
Heavenshade, a flower betrayed by unforgiving earth
Persisted on her twisting curve, reaching beyond sight
For a place where grace and shadow meet and both redeem their worth.
Where darkness spawns a beauty still unspoiled by tricks of light.

Cast out from caves into the drought, shoeless and exposed;
A burden doubling daily brimmed within her womb.
Cradle-crafting carpenters' caprices met their close.
Her folk invoked their love of life by toteming their tombs.

They'd spoke of token maps and meals to palliate her plight
Whilst wimpering of want of food and chasmfulls of kin.
They'd tapped her name into a chalky tablet of polite
Rebukes refuting escapades of exiles and their sins.

Fear and art explain, in part, how hearts and hymns beat out
And deify the debris and damnify the wise.
Lucid flesh becomes enmeshed in welcome knots of doubt
When tenderness affects the sight of long-neglected eyes.

Accusers' tracts and malefactors' motions come to naught
If half the crime goes pardoned, ardently unnamed.
Justice hacks in half-light at what chippings it has caught;
Unvenerable to vipers and a tyrant to the tamed.

Thus all was inhospitable, outwards and beyond.
Ash was heaped on loam to keep creation cramped within.
Heavenshade waylaid her wounds, tuned only to respond
To a dull yet dulcet, rising strain which sang behind her skin.

IV

Not without its squatters, those not tottered by the heat,
The road raked in a revenue, a lacquered, leeward breed
Who puddled thick in pockets, clutching dockets, in receipt
Of the crumbed-up, mordant morsels which the cinders would concede

Please note this is merely scaffolding for the vision I have in mind. All criticism is welcome. Arrowmen, my breast is thine.