Dusk, Black Hills, New Year's Day 2017

In my front room, eyrie, window to the world,
overlooking valley, field, and stretch to mountain,
where in is out, and out is in,
I sit, day-fogged, content, cocooned,
immersed in words, and worlds away.

late-twilight, day fading,
dusk plumed the unseen sky, the curtained fields, and home,
submerged by drifts of curling foam,
shadow-dimmed the smoke-grey hills;
fog-swirl, cloud-drift, and flow.

light shift;
subtle, barely noticed,
seeping silent through the edges
of awareness.
a flicker, ghost-like,
riffling air, vibrating with strange undertones of
haunting, eldritch melody, faint sung
disturbing, 
pricking conscious thought.

my eyes glance up -
I am transfixed,
     drawn out, up into
cloud-fire; mist and tree and time and self are merged,
cloud-swallowed, all substance gone,
dissolved.

Imagine this;
an “other” world, unstable, shifting;
smoke-brown mutates to brick-red ochre,
crimson mists to rose, transforms to luminous red;
and dims to barest flushing pink;

endless synthesis and permutation,
a passion-play, ethereal, suffused
with shapeless, fluid form,
where time itself shape-shifts.

My mind, my body lifts, diffuses,
drifts free in glowing light, then, 
disembodied,
swirls with fog and cloud and mist,
folds tree and field in crimson, rose, and glowing red,
merges time with form,
unfurls, 
   flowing,  seeping into
     sunset cloud.
No more a separate entity,I'm 
magicked into transient form,
colour and mist-merged.

Imagine this.
mist feather-formed flamingo wings,
mysterious, alien
fog, sensuous, sinuous in brolga dance;
the flare of pink flushed
cockatoo lifting 
  in flight,
  the flame of scarlet robin's breast;
heart-blood's crimson pulse;
 the softest touch of 
          roseate dawn:

all that ever was, will be,
aglow, and glowing;
passion, love, and gentle
tenderness.becomes
reality.

Imagine this:
embraced in sunset cloud,
swallowed,
atom-merged in glowing, writhing fog
ebb and flow, 
       ebb and flow -

one long, long moment in one short life,
one frail instant
lingering, 
          flowing, 
                   fading, fading ...

light change,
shape-shift; time slowed to this.

one moment,
   one instant
    one fixed 
      one boundless
    point in 
                 time.


Copyright Jean Law – January – October 2017