Author’s Note:
This sonnet is the sequel to "Ere She Trembled", as directed by the most esteemed Lustrous Lin; henceforth ventured by a poor votary of the Muse, who dared but follow the path her imagination had first ordained.
—The Jewel of the Crown—
When midnight loosed silver from her hair,
I stole where nectar’d dreams veiled all her breath;
She turn’d, and drew me through the perfumed air,
Till warmth made pale the hoary frost of death.
Her throat, where alabaster bloom’d, was warm;
Beneath my hand, her pulse began to sing;
She met mine eyes, and hush’d the gathering storm,
Whilst moonlight trembled on each secret thing.
Then breath to breath, where waking woo’d the dream,
Our silence melted, honey-sweet and deep;
The stars grew languid in their argent gleam,
And night forgot her ancient right to sleep.
Thou art the jewel sleeping in my crown;
I’d lose the world before I laid thee down.
—On the Sight That Waited for You—
Did I love then? My sight had learn’d to lie,
and clothed each apparition in borrowed light;
I kiss’d the dawn and watch’d the western sky,
and deem’d the numinous in mortal sight.
I call’d the rain’s pale argent fall divine,
made vanishing a sacrament of flame;
and made each fugitive splendour a shrine,
and gave the passing world an endless name.
Till thou didst enter—and the very air
seem’d suddenly vacat’d of what it feign’d;
the rain still silver’d every waiting stair,
yet through each interstice the dark remain’d.
I kiss’d thy hand—and all my heavens knew
their light had only been rehearsing you.
—A Cosmography of Wound—
How deep the scar, where starry measures cease,
And sable gulfs unhouse their hoarded fire;
Where suns attenuate, bereft of peace,
And bleed through night the embers of desire;
Each constellation sheds its given name,
And argent heavens fracture into me;
The Milky Way unthreads its vestal flame,
Till blood becomes its dark infinity.
Then bends the Sun, drawn inward through my scar,
Its aureate empire yielding to the night;
Whilst Time lets fall its centuries afar,
And deathless darkness drinks the last of light.
Yet one red pulse persists beneath the scar:
I am the wound by which they learn how far.
Sponsor: Nette Onclaud
Contest: THROUGH AESTHETICA
Date: 21July 2026
Night mantled every copse in velvet's umbrage,
Till silence gathered plicatures of air;
The moon distilled its argent effluence through leaves,
And darkness mastered the susurrant art of prayer.
A solitary moth unseamed the cerulean hush;
The brook rehearsed forgotten silver speech.
Earth wore an almost sacramental nap of shade,
While dawn arrived too reverent to breach.
The first fulguration stooped to kiss a shard,
Not the thunderhead that boasted of its flame;
A broken bottle in an orchard yard
Held one white filament no night could claim.
The beech unlocked a thousand argent leaves;
Each fern leaned nearer, listening through the rain.
A kestrel loosed the wind from both its wings;
The granite seemed to soften in the plain.
Then lightning missed the heavens altogether.
It entered quartz, wet lichen, antler, thorn;
The river halted underneath its weather,
While moss recalled a coastline never born.
An oak drew brightness downward through its roots.
The fox stood still beneath a hawthorn's breath.
One acorn opened, showing not its fruit,
But rings of summers harvested from death.
When morning searched the hills, the sky was gone.
The birds flew lower, as though nothing changed.
Only the broken glass kept filling with the dawn—
Until the sun looked in, and turned away.
—The Blade of Grass—
I sought no empyrean throne beyond the wheeling blue,
But found one adamantine dewdrop trembling in the grass.
It did not scintillate.
It beheld me.
Then every pinion became articulate flame;
The raven's augury, the blackbird's argent hymn,
Were borne upon one unoriginate Breath I could not name.
I watched the lion heave the primordial wind,
The lamb receive its inviolate ordinance.
Neither litigated Eternity.
Rain descended remembering firmament.
The brook relinquished its mountain,
Yet bore its genesis.
Then desolation entered.
No seraph sundered the stillness.
One mortal hand entered mine.
Its benignity outshone
The constellated treasury of heaven.
That night the firmament exhaled one eternal Breath.
The stars did not descend.
The earth ascended.
The adamantine dewdrop withdrew from the blade of grass.
Since then—
Wherever aught lives—
Or abides—
I have never again encountered a universe bereft of God.
Tonight, a yellow moon,
drifts aimless, on black-blue sea,
quivering on the rippling wakes,
brushed by a shaky, softly sighing breeze.
Gathering shoals of shadows gather in the shallows
where they're snared by nets of yearning,
cast to catch ghosts of echoes, forgotten,
lost in the argent churn of tide and time,
put away lest they spoil the ache
of wanton spirits, wandering adrift.
at the whim of wind,
at the tug and drag of tide,
as welcome pixie-dusted dreamers
set adrift, wanting to be lost.
She came in silence where the cedars sway,
A lunar hush beneath the argent trees.
The serpentine wind curled words she wouldn't say—
Just breaths and bow and coolness on the breeze.
Her sisters moved like stars in cascade flight,
The Hunters, free of longing, fierce and far.
Their eyes held depths no lover dared to write,
Each step a hymn beneath a myriad star.
A nebula of dreams unfurled inside,
As if I’d slept too long beneath a name.
She left a lilt, like wildness in the tide,
And something warm that had no need for flame.
No plea shall slither near and stay—
For she lives in me, the break from day.
Echoes of moonlit waves
Bright moonbeams sashay softly on the waves,
and MUTTER tacit secrets to the shore,
that echo deep within the hidden caves,
where ancient voices rest forevermore.
The argent stars watch over heaven’s GATE,
their JEWEL cheering up the velvet sky,
till its SHADOW dies with morning’s mandate
Jewel - Charm
Mandate - reign
Pearlescent specks were sprinkles in a sky
that would have been dark but for the white
of those ivory flakes I saw
twirling so tranquilly down.
Swirls of serenity -
those pearls of the night
filled me sweetly
with delight
before
bed.
When
I woke,
I looked out
my window to
see what night had brought.
While I had been buried
in dreams gone unremembered,
dull barren land of December
lay enfolded pristinely beneath
a beautiful argent eiderdown quilt.
Sunlight or Moonlight - Moonlight on Meadows chosen title 8-21-24
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Moonlight on Meadows
Moonlight lays with meadows
Splashing auroras of platinum mist
On midnight
As lupine enters Luna’s corona
Dressed in veils of silver blue.
Light’s fingertips spread wide
Taking in the silk caress –
Hypnotic lavender and clover.
The silent silver flute song
Parts tangled nests of moonlit shadows
Sinking deeply into the crucible of light
While florid breaths of tuberose,
Leave an argent kiss
In moon pearls of satin dews.
Garlands of scented leaves
Undulate in polar wax and wane
Swaying
Holding close arching moonbows of sterling.
In full splendor of lunar madness
Sweet midnight ambrosias explode
To dust the moonlight and meadows
With crystal bits of silver glitz.
Under a sky of celadon -
I watched bees huddle
In frenzied expectation
Of riding a flaxen petal.
Lupine and globe mallow
Danced about while sage
Waved at me from below -
Comprising my entourage.
I saw pale butterflies mingle
Within dewy creosotes
Then came an argent gale
Which tugged at their cloaks
And then - the drape shifted
But my vision proves true -
A celadon echo gifted
To me that sunny interlude.
We are a species gnawing at the roots of existence, hellbent on self-immolation, our every endeavor a funiculus of futility. The argent legacy of our forebears, squandered by imbecilic hands that molded us into hollow effigies, devoid of essence, yet rictus-grinning with vacuous ignorance.
Fear, the petrifying shackles that bind us, rendering us ciphers of compliance, indentured servants to the whims of the elected elite. We toil, mesmerized by the tintinnabulation of trinkets, and the numeric abstractions that promise ephemeral solace, but deliver only eternal enslavement.
We are fallen titans, parasitic echoes of greatness, our nebulous dreams reduced to flickering embers, as we succumb to the siren's song of servitude.
Worst of all someone is reading this right now thinking I am gloomy and need to smile, but can’t say I am wrong, my question to you is, your joking right?
(Written for a contest “Write a poem based on a poem.’
Inspired by: “My Cat Is High, and So Am I” by Thomas W. Case)
Honey, I was stoned, so stoned.
I hardly knew what was going on.
That’s when I saw it was gone.
The moon, I mean - hold on -
Takes a swig of tart, but sugary lemonade
I watch the moon - when it’s there - you know?
I’ve always loved the moon - its reflective glamor,
the way it seems to bend light around it,
like a beautiful woman walking into a bar.
The moons like my cat, she has beauty, without vanity
- and without much gravity - like, you know - the moon.
But as I was saying, it was gone - suddenly?
It felt sudden - and visceral - like I’d misplaced something.
I know what you’re thinking, and no, it wasn't behind clouds.
So anyway, man, I looked around and there it was, as if by magic,
it couldn’t have been any clearer and it's never looked nearer,
than it was, right there, in my rear-view mirror.
I had to laugh. You see, I was stoned - so stoned.
Stoned - but I’m never alone, when I can commune with the distant,
inconstant, love of my life, the ever-argent moon.
She wore a gown of every shade
even daisies in the fields could not compare
to the eggshell-ivory-white, vanilla hues
of her, nor the bright intense yellows of her shine!
She was a gravitationally bound star,
even the moon unmatchable to her rare beauty
was beyond compare to her eccentric shades of navy,
royal sapphires and Mayan blues !
Unparalleled to any other star, on a cold December night
she watched her Savior Babe lay dormant, at the feet of her
Un-comparable as gold, frankincense and Myrrh,
unequaled as Archaic Angels of God's Kingdom girth,
a transcendent helium gown of Romanesque beauty flared
and arrived that day.
Spreading argent silver gowns of light and shining like
a thousand twinkling lights, the world was never the same again
after that first Holy Cry, of Love.
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