Psithurism
There was a sickly tree
In a barren clearing
In a burning country
On a mourning day.
A wild crown of branches
Haloed by concentric rings;
A rising wave of spires and spindles lashing at the air;
Prismatic infernos leaping forth from in-betweens.
The void is silent.
No voices in clouds.
And the wind is a word that trailed.
Conflagràre.
Conflagràre.
Observe that you are not yourself.
Grey fire licks the skin like lichen.
Observe that this pain is not your own.
Topple to the planar salts
Content in this purifying wisdom:
These eyes that now see;
The eyes that beheld prophecy,
They were never the eyes of me.
Go inward now, forget your breath-
My Toreador, my Hortator.
Close quietly, freed from images-
My Paranoiac, my Metanoiac.
Evaporate beneath the total might of; the depthless, unceasing majesty of
The Absolute World.
Become dust in dust sifting by in the violently churning tempests of
The Grand Cacophony.
What looms is eternity,
What spans is time,
What one string has led
Is the timeless dead,
What an opal holds;
What the water enfolds
Is the history of reality untold.
May a unit of time intone time's fate?
May a sessile whisper collapse into an ascending, crescendoing boom?
May a retrocessive second retool the rules of the seconds' worlds by drawing deep from a pool of unspooling memory?
The leaning tree still stands
On a drifting sea of sands
Casting shadows by night
That stretch away to light.
Copyright © Tom Kelleher | Year Posted 2023
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