echoes of an angel: may

Chapter 5 of "an owl on the moon..."

The Idler’s door screeches open, shedding veiled light on Daniel Wirth.  “Your eyes glimpse only yesterday, my friend.  Where is today in your vision?” he says.

     “Yesterday is all I have of value, Daniel...How I want to exit.  Life here is the seas’ sand; beaten and lifeless.” Daniel turns from me and lifts his hand toward the tide, framed in dusty glass.

 

“To your simple existence, do not boast;

merely to breathe or move or think is not to live.

The shore of the sea is but a ghost,

compared to the depth its wholeness gives.

You exist in the miry foam;

make the ocean depths your home.”

 

     Smoked and shady gray light reflects from the counter.  Raven guests drift past slowly in silence as the sea cries.

     “You don’t understand, Daniel,” I say.  “You don’t understand these chains:

 

I long to drift through turquoise skies;

race the wind in rampant flight.

Ruddy chains have framed my eyes,

they seize my heart and stain the light.”

 

     Daniel turns to walk toward the door, then speaks.  “How many waves will beat this shore until you breathe your last?  These chains will bind unendingly, unless you kill your past.”  Turning his eyes toward mine he says, “Let it go…Let it go.”

     At this, Daniel Wirth passes through the Idlers’ door into shimmering amber.  Pillars of celestial light support the roof of clouds and mist, scattering shadowed shapes across the horizon.

 

The golden ball of fire brings warmth again.

How I wish the sallow heat could

take this lonely man.

The breeze, a song, plays through the

rustling sand grass and hollow.

A tune played over memories’ dust sweetens the air.

 

     “I touched the moon last night,” and how even Solomon is vanquished, if for a moment, by her words.

       The days have been wind; the weeks as moving air.  Oh, that the clocks ever changing face might rest for only a moment, or cease for all time.

     “Is not eternity an everlasting moment?”

       If only I could touch silent stillness, but the waves are endless.  Each wave brings the clock a new face.  How it ages so across the tortured tide.

     Fire cascades from heaven as the sun begins its morning reign, swallowing streaked shadows.  A meandering train of color and cages fills the soft horizon.

 

Tents and tarps ascend on high;

painted scarlet, emerald and sapphire.

Voices sing and colors glide.

A carousel escorts an angel choir.

Sweet and sharp the air;

castles line the azure coast.

Cages filled with empty eyes,

are viewed by eyes of walking ghosts.

Organs sing and gold balls dance.

Children’s dreams take gilded wings.

Salt to taste and heat to touch,

as the afternoon, its chorus sings.

 

     I view the cloth towers from afar, as salt spray brushes my skin. I now stride ever swiftly to the colored castles, hearing the bells chime and children sing.

     A ticket taker wipes his face with an emerald handkerchief as I trade my coins for a slip of paper.

 

Four clowns with covered faces

pass by my standing place.

What’s hiding underneath the paint

my cautious eyes can trace.

 

     In the shadow of colored towers and spiral pillars, legs shuffle and stride across rock and ocean grass as the sound swells.  Voices peal and pierce the solemn stillness.  Black and white, brown and yellow; the world is on a ride. In a moment the music ends, washed away by the ocean roar.

     The pool of darkness fills the sky, as the wisping clouds caress the face of the moon.  All color is swallowed by gray.  All skin becomes the same.

 

The drum of the sea

recurs through the night.

The song of the drummer,

replaces our sight.

All color absorbed

by the hand of God.

Our blindness gains sight

by His judgement rod.

 

     Deep darkness covers the landscape.  Sacred darkness envelopes the sea and sand. The veiled shadow brings a hush over the horizon.

     Iced sand grapples with my feet as I stride to the shore.  The air is moist and still.  Copper crests and sapphire sands now glow from the rising amethyst orb.  I cast my line past the tide, into the distant echoes of thunder, and rest upon tear drenched stone. My moments are fruitless.

     Weary as I enter my room for what remains of the night, I lay upon my worn blankets, thin and rough. As my head rests on my pillow, I close my eyes...

 

     I walk down a child’s path, thin and worn, with the angel on my arm. Her smile breathes the sunshine.  She now extends her hand and I sense the gentle quiet of her touch. In a moment the bright sky is blemished with a demons’ darkness, and I hear the howl of a beast. Sarah screams above the roar:

 

“In my eyes are the numberless lies

of one possessed with frenzied fears.

And though I draw you close, my hand extends

to keep you distant from my tears.”

 

     I turn to her vision and say,

 

“O child, you dare not age,

until your haunting pain subsides.

And running breathless though standing still,

your howling fear now hides.”

 

     She is torn from my embrace, caught into the winded air and flung into the screaming sea. In anguish I search for her across the horizon. The waves slaughter the silence with their roar, but I see only their movement. With each step and stride the pricking salt odor suffocates my vision. Rising out of the water is a shimmering bloody specter that hovers with a horror, and then dissipates like a milky mist.

     Sarah’s hand rises above the waves, reaching as it were toward the hand of Icarus. As the nimbus moon wanders overhead, she lifts above the billowing rage in a crimson gown. I look intently into her olive eyes, which seem ever filled with desperation. We now both stand so close, and yet in isolation.  She reaches for my hand as tears flood her face, but I slip slowly beyond her grasp.

 

     I open my eyes...

     A chilled odor wafts around me as I glance from my window. The cloth castles are gone from the deep amethyst sky.

     How I dream of windows without walls, with a transparent tranquillity.  In a raging weakness I wander from my window into a muffled thunder.

 

 

Reviews

[Pax]

Sarah keeps on getting mysterious in this chapters… seems like they have a deeps connections of the past that binds them together in friendship love… thought if I will predict ahead the two has this deep emotional attachment with each other that makes it more that friends… though I need to read it all first to know my prediction…

Daniel is such a good friend in this chapter… he sees it all… his wisdom is evident:
“Your eyes glimpse only yesterday, my friend” “where is today in your vision?”
“Yesterday is all I have of value”
~ ~ oh how I just love these lines and the reply as well…. And I really understand it, that sometimes people are trap in the past, only looking at it, never looking ahead of it… I say: “ we are caged of what we believe in” makes it hard to move on…

“How many waves will beat this shore until you breathe your last?” “these chains will bind unendingly, unless you kill your past” “let it go… let it go”
~ oh what a beautiful lines, great advice… a great voice from within you my friend… I say this book is your healing process…. Keep listening to your soulful self my friend and you will come a long way…

some wisdom i thought after inspired by your work for u:
The past is our memories, though our memories fade but the feelings are never erase… Some past are hard to let go, some past are our strength, some past are our future inspiration, The past grips firmly on your emotions making it hard to let go, so some past needs someone that will put it to a closed… this person will give you proper closure and patch the deep wounds for you to heal…

Brilliant shining emerald!!!

[Jenny Nelson]

"Ruddy chains have framed my eyes,

they seize my heart and stain the light.”

You really have a knack for writing such key lines that so much else pertains to.
Starting to get a bit scary. Such is the nature of fairy tales, dreams... and life.

[Tracie Skarbo]

I don't know if you have read my profile but I too have a love of the sea. I hear its call and its beckon no matter where I am or how far from it I seem to be. I think that for some of us it is as though the sea has a part of our soul, our being, and this longing to be close is part of it. Wanting and needing to be with that part that has merged with the sea. I wonder if I will ever be free of that feeling. :) I hope not. This chapter again is amazing. Your context and the way you paint on the canvas is truely brilliant.