Flickers.

The fire casts red-lit shadows on the trees
Interspersed with the tall black silhouettes
Lurking soundlessly among the reeds with spears.
Hark! The dogs bark. The hunt begins with ease.

The pine branches’ stillness is disturbed by
The abrupt appearance of a ripple
That spreads, distorting the hills and the moon
Into wondrous shapes like clouds in the sky.

Beneath the blazing light of desert stars
At a lonely palm-shrouded oasis,
Two figures sleep among the sand dunes,
Unaware of the lion sniffing their scars.

As so much poetry starts to take form,
Somewhere in a silent unnoticed glade,
A quick lightning strike; a flower withers;
And a poem collapses in the storm.

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Picture: courtesy Sayan

Escape

I had intended to trap the light behind the bars, but in the end I could not resist setting it free. :)

There Are Times...

There are times
between the ragged, stiff denials
of love and longing;
Times between the resolutions
not to bind, not to need;
when they lose themselves in dreams.

In juvenile dreams of landscapes,
of fingers entwined in hair;
of fights, of kisses, of silence
as the wind calls their names;
of the music of the twilight
weaved in softly fading strains.

There are times
between the dying moon and stillborn sun
when the lampless dark lies heavy:
only then they are equal.
Open. Trusting. Vulnerable.
Those times are few and far between.

The dawn breaks coldly
upon two not-quite-children
(much too old for dreams)
flicking each other away
like the specks of cigarette ash
on the pavement at their feet.