The Belfry
Bells ring songs throughout the clear night air,
Singing, resounding, everywhere,
Beautiful balladic notes following,
In sequence, song to harmony.
Which ballad do you hear,
Is it strong, serenading clear,
Do you merely hear the words,
Or do hearts beat with notes, playing your chords?
To chime, a bell forged unlike the rest,
Chimerical dome rocks easily swaying,
Listening to the bells of harmony,
Discord steals a song.
Now hollow, hanging from steeples high,
Quietude from quintessence,
And those that never heard,
Alone, keeping company,
Of bats at night in its belfries.
Compendium
It’s rained drops of colorless
Liquid to run creeks,
Sidewaying streams,
To fill rivers, languid lakes
That preserve, evaporate
To finally join salty seas
Wavering rain drops of colorless
Now for quite a time
Winter air is cold and bare
Silence and stillness can’t separate
For something so sure
It may leak a surreptitious glance
But standing with a silk scarf
Wound and coiled around her neck
Hiding green snake lines
A fixed gaze
Frozen
She replies
“I don’t know what the sun looks like anymore,
It’s been too long since I’ve seen it.
Now I’ve been married to him, over there, for 51 years.
When he gets cold, and easily he does, he gets crabby.
So he’s off inside somewhere, until that taximan comes.
And you know what– Weathermen lie!”
And the rain fell colorless
And a red jeep four-by-four honked and stopped.
“Oh there’s the man
I’ve been waiting for.”
And she peered out from under the black umbrella and smokeless rain, with lightning dancing like a star sapphire in her blue eyes,
And concluded,
“That’s not him, I almost got the wrong man.”
And oddly enough, the bleary rain ceased by gray frays of silverlining.
She humored herself with her own mistake and let out an
uproarious laugh, twirling thunder into her own ovation.
Incantation
First ranting rain
Then thirsty thunder
A mist solo wind
Icing catamarans in gales
Arctics of snow surmount
Buried soft and still
Surrendering I heard
And listened
To all that floods
The furrows
Beyond glaciers
When even polar bears
Sleep to songs
all poems by permission of Lynn Lily, copyright, 1998
PS
Lily Lynn: I have since published my first book of poetry called Migrations which is available for $16.50 including postage and anyone interested can reach me at llily@bigfoot.com. It would appeal to adults that value family, and childhood kinships.