Tags
creating reality, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, manifestation, mythology, nagual, personal alchemy, plot devices, septime, seven stanza verse, subtle bodies, the hero archetype, writer's craft
A hero comes to me in dark of night,
mandolin strapped to his back, with shoulders
curled against the wind. Chinooks are moving
in. I think they may have blown him here,
though hard to tell. He moves with equal ease
through stillness, scaling walls in minor keys,
ignoring doors to broach this gate of mine.
My hero cannot be possessed. He’s mine
at best of times, a realist, nowhere
to be found when I have lost my keys
or sense of self. His breadth of shoulders
frames serenity while chaos storms the night;
he fends me from imagining dis-ease
and keeps my languid spirit moving.
On cloudy days, he plays mazurkas here
beside the fire until the pulsing night
surrounds us, and desires that I mine
with little hope by day spring free with ease.
My hero stands on solid ground of shoulders
that precede him. Our whole procession’s moving
toward an assembling One who holds the keys.
When I acclimate to ease
inside, I feel my hero moving
fully aimed to please the now and here,
delivering friends and lovers with the keys
to ships and fantasies, a diamond mine
without the cruelty. His silhouetted shoulders
steps ahead, he entertains no dark night
of the soul, adept at holding shoulders
loose, my hero is a player strumming keys
in octaves you can only hear at night.
His eyes and smile I have made mine.
The rest is me, a subtle body moving
with the cellular eccentricities of here
as best of all & better coming. He’s my ease,
the plot and action to my story keys,
reminding me, accept no substitutes! Mine
is the right to happiness by means of ease,
pursuit of joy. He is my rock, unmoving.
From him, I catapult and build us here
a cityscape of dreams. We love at night,
create by dawn the slope of light’s soft shoulders.
Through brighter times we are now moving,
he and I, receptive to the exponential ease
of Creation sprinkling across our shoulders
bold imaginations of the tumbling, lusty night.
Tolerate no whimpering fakes with rusty keys,
he quips. The hero’s role is yours and mine
to be enjoyed through mortals here.
The peace that’s mine brings more of same. The hero’s keys
to each with ease is given here, where comedy is moving,
masked, our shoulders squared encircling day and night.
~~~
This poem is a septime, a form of my own devising with seven repeating end words in seven, seven-stanza lines. The three-line envoi counts down the original 1-7 words, 7-1.
© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image of Lemminkäinen’s mother,
artist unknown