The ghosts I saw by the Menai Strait

[Ex Tempore XIV]

An idea that conjured itself whilst on an evening run that took me by the Menai Strait on 18 March 2012.

As I was passing by, I saw with unbelieving eye
the ghosts of children dancing in the field,
dancing under coming night, right by the Menai.
They glowed and flitted in the evening-blue
that lit the silent sky and this walker passing by,
who stood and witnessed these spectres
writhe and leap and turn from side to side,
from one end of the field to the other,
with nary a cry of laughter or anything besides.
I proposed to myself to approach these children,
phantoms of the night, of a time long gone by,
but worried they would fear my coming and
hie away back to the graves where they must lie.
So instead I decided to marvel at this thing
I now saw; and I smiled, for I had not turned
away in horror as men are wont to do when
they face sights like this, a sight of sprites
who no longer knew the real horrors of the world.
But at length I was espied and the children ceased
their frolicking and for a moment looked at me.
With great effort I tried a word, a salutation, a "hi",
but came up with nothing and simply gaped at them.
Though I could not see any light in their eyes
I could tell with little doubt they were not afraid of me,
and that they knew I, likewise, was not fearful of them.
All at once they turned and began to recede into the dark,
into the night, leaving as silently as the sky up high.
And there I was, left alone, left to remain and reflect on
what I had seen—was it real or but a vision in my mind?

M.M. — Martius MMXII

"Ex Tempore VII" runner-up in Thynks Publications competition

"Ex Tempore VII" (below) has been chosen as a runner-up in Thynks Publications Limited's Inspirational Poems competition. I was quite pleased when I was told, not only because I submitted it as an entry on a whim but because I wrote it in one night (hence its "ex tempore" title).

This poem, along with prizewinners and other runners-up of the competition, will be published in a small book sometime in 2013.


Ex Tempore VII

For G.

For the music I cannot draw
For the pictures I cannot write
For the sounds I wish I saw
There are those that I might

For the places of which I dream
For the tastes I hope to breathe
For the things I really mean
May rhyme and reason never leave

For the love I long ago lost
For that which did not come
For the paths that did not cross
There is still little and some

For the goals still unreached
For the struggles not yet won
For the walls that sometimes breach
Tomorrow will see a new sun

For the many occasions I reminisce
For what are now but memories
For all the days that I miss
There is still much for me to see

For age that creeps and creeps
For the time that slips away
For mountains now too steep
There will be stories to recount and lay

For the mistakes that I made
For the regret that burns
For the words I mislaid
I can and will always learn

For the fear that restrains
For when around me there are none
For the times ruled by pain
It is I who will overcome

For all this and more
For what will come and what came before
There is me, there is you
And this is all we ever need know

M.M. — November MMXI

White blossoms seen on Glanrafon Hill

[Ex Tempore XIII]

Flaunting gleefully like crowned child-majesties
against the backdrop of a sky-adoring sun;
these white blossoms, nature's emissaries,
announce to me that spring has finally come.

M.M. — Februarius MMXII

Effusion

Extraction began in a near-hypnagogic stupor at midnight whilst listening to Borknagar's Quintessence.

"Upon the ruins of the future
I climbed to behold
A distance so pale
An existence so cold"

If I were to show you the things that flutter in my heart and in my mind, I venture that whole worlds would then be created—birthed from simple lines of meandering thought. These things, these worlds: some of them could fit like evanescent trinkets in the palm of your wilful hand. Others could span the breadth of your own mind, or the universe that we share (illimitability characterising both). Pierce the gossamer film of my psychic enclosure and my consciousness would stream out with the kinetic force of far-faring comets.

There is an intractable longing in me, a bittersweetness that burrows in me every which way. Though the lids of my eyes feel unbearably heavy at this moment, they have weighed immeasurably for so long: I dare seek and see—both with my eyes and eyeless eye—the impossibilities of cosmic voyages, future-fantasies and idio-dramas that play out differently in every new dream. I cannot express how much I desire to live them.

And the burden remains my own.