APRIL SELECTIONS:
Ciaron's Dream by Larry D. Jennings
Cluain Mhic Nois
Three saints stand watch o’er northern gate to meadows of the sons of Nor where chiefs and warriors laid in state ‘neath green and gorse of Shannon’s shore.
Thrice buttressed path from Ciaron’s hand led all who trod this hallowed place to masters, teaching in that land a higher learning, pious grace
within a stark monastic clime. The centuries are on display from crypts and castles built through time to broken cross in disarray.
A place of temples, church and walls with blessings sprinkled on the ground, the last High King rests in these halls until the horns of Heaven sound.
Fair Erin, ravaged from afar by Viking’s axe and Norman's blade, returns to beauty from each scar more lovely, strong and unafraid.
Crypt-Keeper's Irony by Lorraine M. Kanter
He wanders tombs through dark of night in search of treasures to alight a path to riches, sweet perfumes. Through dark of night, he wanders tombs.
This thirst he seldom seems to quench consuming dust’s archaic stench whilst raiding chambers, sneers death’s curse... he seldom seems to quench this thirst.
Inscriptions warn of punishment in frail hereafter: life’s lament defiled - lest one Pharaoh’s scorn of punishment, inscriptions warn.
Adorned facade discreetly hid Necropolis’ broken lid that once beheld doubt’s living god -- discreetly hid, adorned facade.
In Thebes amid disunity, Stonemasons’ opportunity is shared in Nile’s mild reeds amid disunity -- in Thebes.
Crypt-keepers feign incompetence whitewashed in deben bribe's defense while Ma’at is droned through priestly reign; incompetence -- crypt-keepers feign.
This irony remains today, the ones in power do betray a nourishing of Ka campaigns. Today, this irony remains.
Footnotes: Necropolis: An extensive and elaborate burial place serving an ancient city. Deben: A measurement of cost used as the unit of value for exchange. Ma’at: The concept of order, truth and justice. After death, a person's soul is weighed against the feather of Ma'at to determine their fate in the afterworld. ka (in Ancient Egyptian Religion): A spiritual ‘double’ of the deceased, living within the body during life, and surviving the body after death. It was believed to be one of two spirits inhabiting the body, the main component of the soul. The ka is closely tied with the ba, the personality or psychic force of the deceased.
GAIA by Sylvia Maclagan
To unwind, to dream, beneath the canopy of a willow-tree! I wander your prairies, Gaia, picture sunflowers smile at summer skies, charting the sun’s orbit till nightfall.
Vast terrains pretend to slumber, guarded by languid owl-eyes stalking slinky felines and other unseen creatures of night.
I sleep beneath my leafy umbrella as frogs croak the onset of dawn, heralding showers flirting with rainbows. In dreams I circumnavigate mountain lakes, sight naissance of rivers.
I recite poems that nobody wrote, wondrous words dormant in memories of the dead. I gaze at Gothic cathedrals, the Taj Mahal, Roman aqueducts dominating Italic olive groves, Alexandria’s library perished beneath the sea.
Libelious lies and carnage disrupt my trance.
Where has love gone, where the chubby toes of children? Why does blossom wither by waysides? Nuclear submarines inflame sapphire seas…
I've shared hope with shipwrecked migrants, blending homage and heartache. I am a refugee seeking a fresh life, or just life... I dream the dreams of all men.
I conjure up dust-bowls on Austral steppes, Amazonia gutted by russet roads, thawing glaciers thunder Andean slopes.
Ice cubes tremble in my crystal tumbler, as I offer a toast to Gaia, to mystery, unreason, riddles, the paradox of her existence in space-time, to reality.
Reality is the destruction I have caused her. It is mourning a death foretold, though Death is not her death but mine.
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