Sparrow Scratchingswritten in Algonquin Park, 8/13/88, for a child who wanted me to sing her something.
Sparrow, scratch my windowsill,
As you will, as you will.
Hide your head in feathered breast,
As you rest, as you rest.
Leave your footprints in the snow,
Ere you go, ere you go.
Fly before the winter's grip;
South you'll slip, south you'll slip,
But return to meet the spring:
Sing again; do; sing again.
8/7/88
Red
Orange and gold
Amber glowing
Light is going.
Painted
On the sky
Colors flowing
Light is going.
Rainbow
On horizon
Wind is blowing
Light is going.
Navy
In the east
Feels like snowing
Light is going.
Wind is blowing--
Light is gone.
1983
Thunder of men's chariots beats the trembling ground
Battling with the earth, they rip; they tear
Long grasses bend their head to mourn the sound
Waiting for their turn.
Hear the pheasant, ringed in red, cry once and die
Geese fly up to flee the crack of dawn
Hares kick up heels, astonished; run pell-mell
Flustered swallows fly
The hedgerows creak and rustle nervously
Rank on rank they run to meet the foe
The willow sighs and lets its hair fall limp
Crying with the crow
As darkness falls, a cloven hoofprint
Glimmers, filled with tears
Then night, a final crunch;
It disappears.
ENB 88
Where the fireflies go up in droves
And the snows in summertime
Wrap the woods in satin gloves
Where the flowers are the suns
Incandescent plasma spheres
And the moon is low and big
Endless nights for countless years
All the sky brings lavender
When the sunlight breaks the night
Then the mist sinks to the ground
Yielding to the mauve moonlight
All the beasts of all this world
Spend their insubstantial days
The glossies dancing off the clouds
Scaleys slink in mossy caves.
Have you seen the forests there?
Spiny leaves flash golden sheens
Vinelike tendrils vault the rocks
Sporting sprays of red and green
Oh, but the seas are pale and gray
Seamless-smooth like liquid steel
Whitecaps, no, but pinkish foam
Laces waves with lines of teal
Dark green eels are all that slice
Ripple-ringed surf with violet wakes
While somewhere on sands of black,
Lifeless shores, the water breaks
Who are those that call it home?
Where winds purge the empty air
Why does the earth so sweetly glow
When the sun and the moon aren't there?
ENB '88
I pull the strings to make you dance,
Through my voice you live and breathe;
But I always ask you leave
To use you as I do.
I make and shape the circumstance,
Write and draw your face and name,
But you hold me, all the same:
The hand that writes is you.
For though I grip the pen and ink,
I am but your vessel plain.
What I write is your domain.
Your will dictates the lines:
And every time I stop and think
And grope for sounds to match the sense
My mind goes black; my fingers tense--
The thoughts I'll use are thine.
ENB 8.2.88
Ringed by frosty nights
And the softest falling snow
Whispering on the surface
Of the glass-smooth lake at dusk.
Listen to the stillness...
Cradled on the mountain peaks,
Blown across the wind-cut stones,
Biting at the stunted fir trees
Food for small, starved tundra blooms.
Listen to the quiet...
in summer afternoons
Wafting from the leafy tops
Of a forest steeped in life
Or a jungle dark and dense.
Listen to the silence...
Held in desert sands
Or the deepest caves of stone
Grasping scattered moonbeams
Lurking deep within our bones.
8.7.88
Dædalos on the Rocks
"He flew too high," the strange man said,
Shaking his head,
And scattering tears.
"I tried to catch him, tumbling down,
But still he drowned.
My boy, my dear!"
"You're ill, my friend; here, take my hand.
I'll take you home.
You can't stay here."
"You're kind, but please, just let me be,
Here by the sea,
Where I can wait."
"The wind is shifting with the tide;
Do come inside!
It's getting late."
"The sun sets now, like him before.
I saw him soar,
Then plummet down."
"Aye, sir, I saw with my own eyes
His weird demise:
He dropped like stone.
Indeed, though it be mad, I'd swear
The sun couldn't bear
A rival foe.
Perhaps Apollo caused it all;
For mortals fall
To those above."
The victim smiled. "I doubt, good man,
You understand
The truth in what you've said!
But leave me here, to watch the waves,
His only grave,
My final bed."
5/8/89
Polaris
Once upon a troubled dream
By the winds forever chained
Spirits of the misty clouds
Are forever doomed to fly
Dragging all the mighty stars
Through the caverns of the sky:
On heavenly heights
Though moonless nights
They struggle to race
Across midnight's face.
They wheel, they dip,
Playing crack-the-whip
Towards earth to strain,
But sky-bound by chains
they must settle back
On the star-studded track.
Those that fall behind
Are doomed to shine
In a dying streak
Down from heaven's peak.
On any night of any year
You may see their slow progress
Wheeling round the hub of night
Restlessly, while mortals rest.
And always does the cold North Star
Watch them as they rise and fall:
The heartless master of them all
Twinkling smugly at their plight.
We passed beneath the granite arch
We echoed through the slate-gray halls
Before the empty fireplace
We stopped, and let the silence fall.
And saying farewell one last time,
I thought of just two months before
When I had first been guided here
Into the gates of Elsinore.
Just two months passed; they flickered by
And through it all my heart had known
That all too soon the bliss would fade
The friends I made would soon be gone.
Therefore I lived life to the full
Two months: to me it seemed two years.
A novice knight new to the land
Embarked with all her hopes and fears.
And one I met within this realm
Inspired my heart to dance and sing.
I loved you from the first bright day
Both out of fiction, and within.
I could not speak the thoughts I felt
So couched in story form I wrote
As fiction, feelings that were true,
The inner spillings of my heart.
I knew the time was fleeting short
I knew the moment would not last
Yet still I did not know such grief
Would sting me when the joy had passed.
Now you are gone, and I am here
The Royal Knight of Elsinore:
How harsh and cold that title sounds
That should have gone to you, my dear.
2/6/90 Merra & the Mage
excerpt from Elsinore.... (Angela wrote Korvax)
Merra walked outside of the walls of the city, serene and unafraid, through the whispering meadows. She felt the grass swish between her toes as she stared up into the moonless, star-riddled sky.
A dark figure detached itself from a wall, and moved to walk beside her. The black mage laid a thin hand on her arm, not speaking.
She shuddered at the touch, and for a fleeting instant the mind of a startled deer was hers. But she would not shift in the presence of others except in direst need, so she stilled her racing heart and turned dark eyes on the intruder. Her smooth face glimmered like the absent moon.
"Ah. 'Tis thee," she said, little reassured. "This night lacks proper moonlight; it makes me see evil in the shadows."
"You should trust your eyes," he replied softly.
She forced herself not to look away. His face was mortal enough; she only wished her vision was similarly human. For beyond the crags of his angular face and deep eyes she could gaze upon the blackness within, the yawning cavern of his soul. It was not empty nor hollow, but it echoed with dark forms all the more terrible because she could understand them. He was evil: thus her heart sang. But it was an ordered evil. And she did not fear him, any more than the tree fears the thunderbolt or the earthquake. She saw him, as she saw all things, for what he was.
"Wherefore walkest thou beside me?" she demanded. "What wouldst thou have with me, mage?"
"To look at you," he said quietly. "You are not like others."
His words arrested her footsteps as his hand upon her forearm had not. Merra had not expected this. She saw his dark eyes that were not so different from her own. They held prisoner the reflections of stars in their black depths. "Thou seest the world as I do," she said in wonder. "Thou watchest the stars from the wings of wind and owl; the ocean with the sight of the deepwater fish; the forest with a fox's vision. Thou'rt not like the others, either."
"No," he smiled bitterly, "I guess not, but neither am I like you. To me the world is a place of pain and torment, and I help make it so."
What he said should have frightened her, but it did not. "I know. The good of the world cannot exist without its opposite. I am not angry with thee, even for what thou didst to me," She remembered Jinnet's snarl of anger when the girl had started to spring upon the mage to protect Merra. She smiled at the image. "I will not condemn thee, even though I may stop thee if ever thou shouldst strike my friends again."
He smiled unpleasantly, "Many have tried. Your loyalty to your friends is admirable: foolish, but admirable."
"It is," she agreed. "I know I would fail against thy force, for what can a mere shapechanger do against the power of evil itself? But I would still try. Wouldst thou do the same for thy friends, in my place?"
A pained look crossed his face, "My friends?" He searched her face for something. What it was even he could not say.
"Thou wouldst tell me thou hast none?" she said sharply. "Come, sir. Didst thou not do thus for the white mage, when thou barely knew her, for far less reason?"
"You know nothing." He saw once more the vision of Amari, her dragons, and the narrow escape from the burning city.
She saw the memories flicker like meteors across the surface of his mind, then plunge back into the inky depths where she dared not follow. She waited for him to speak again.
He did not speak. Instead, he took her long hands in his own. Starlight shown through their interlaced fingers.
Merra stood perfectly still, feeling his faint pulse through her fingertips. Somehow she had not expected something so human, although she knew him to be very mortal indeed. Her mind dove further down into his like a stone in water. Suddenly the spiderweb of fear tickled the back of her throat. Her spirit struggled out of the deep well of his thoughts; she had not realized how far she had been drawn in.
"I..." she gasped, "I will not let thee possess me!"
"I have no desire to," he replied.
Frigida Nox Sed Formosa
The wind blows cold tonight,
Though sun shone hot and bright but yesterday.
The stars gleam in the dark
And shine down on my face.
I think of you, my love.
The hurt once sharp is soft and sweet inside.
I smile at the cold
And bite the icy air.
I dream of you, my friend,
And know with joy that you are coming soon.
I walk, chilled, through the dark
Beneath a crooked moon.
All now is cold and blue,
Though gold and green were burning yesterday.
(spring early fickle is)
I greet the baffled air.
I must now take my sleep
And lie alone and shivering in the dark,
But not in loneliness:
With you in mind I dream.
7/3/90
love breeds fear
love, and eyes
eyes that look at you
and say
I Care
not for sight
or sound
or touch
or other things beyond
but for YOU.
Nothing is
more terrifying
than she who LOVES you
Nothing stronger
than her love
for it can break you
as hate
or indifference
cannot
Entry from the Erdman Backsmoker Communal diary, where I and my family of friends at Bryn Mawr used to hang out (and write Elsinore)....
Dec 4:
I like the sofa here, more Elsinore reading room.
Yea verily, I do eep.
Another dream, and too cowardly to confess that in sprite of frequent searches, Silence, I haven't found that citrene that fell out of my pillow a while back. I'll get you another. sorry.
This was a sneaky Nightmare. Nazis, Hounds of Lucifer, worms from ST III on the Genesis planet, all manner of ickyness that seemed real, but at least not excruciating pain nonstop or friends trying to kill me (mostly). Nasty part was when I woke up, I said, "oh, it was just an awful nightmare." Then I realized I was in the house of a family friend who lives two miles down the road from me. And there was a rolled up Weimar Republic Newspaper next to me, and a sealed cookie tin in which I'd scraped and sealed up most of the worms that had popped out of my arm in the nightmare. And my left hand hand blisters and was bleeding where I'd been having to shoor the 50-lb bow in my dream. And the brand from Auchwitz was there. I walked back to my house and Mom had fits. I'd disappeared in Jan 1991 and hadn't been seen since. (I realized the Gulf War was over, and wanted to read TIME to find out what I'd missed). And I kept saying "It was just a dream, dammit!" but I was malnourished and my doctor found I had a half-healed fracture of my skull where I'd been struck by an SS officer and now we had to see if BrynMAwr would let me into second semester. I knew the first part was a nightmare; the frightening part was that somehow it had been real, according to physical evidence, when it just could'nt be. The scientists wanted to study me, but I refused and went back to Mawr, having to not answer my phone because I kept getting phone calls from reporters; everyone here treated me like eggshell because they were unsure about me, and I did lousily in classes because I'd missed some and was still recovering from my ordeal.
Only my alarm woke me up.
I'm better this time than last time, but I'm not happy. I resent having my precious few hours of sleep wasted. My back hurts. -Ariadneia
August 27, 1993
(Diary) After a wonderful week with Pennsic, the last with my friends, I drove my love home with her friend Judith, who is about to embark on her exciting passage through Bryn Mawr. Seven hours that day, getting to parents' house at midnight, a scant day to pack, then a nine hour drive to new home. Oh, I like my Home. I moved in, got rid of parents yesterday. Today slept in, tidied, unpacked suitcases.
Tonight Dave called to ramble about old times and the same old topics. Didn't even mind, though my dinner grew cold and I didn't get to eat until nine.
I want to be at Bryn Mawr. Customs week is starting. New faces, new family arriving, and I cannot meet them, greet them with open arms. Cannot see them. Cannot see old faces. Cannot know that, if I wished, I could walk to Morris woods or hide in one of the three smokers or go to Athene, the Cloisters, my own room in Pem east, the dungeon, a friend's room, my love's house. Never again. I will always be a visitor; never will I call it home, or, if I go back someday, I will be older, will not fit into the smokers quite (a Mawrtyr that, like Dave, talks too much in her loneliness and never leaves them alone), and things will have changed, not just in that the faces I miss will be gone, and the spirit of my favorite places will have shifted with time. As will I.
I want to be there now, finding a frosh, eyes shining, nervous, unsure of herself, needlessly self-deprecating, and I could give her tea and tell her (though she will barely believe me) how she may be the one everyone looks to for advice and comfort someday. How she is a wonderful person, and can be her own unique self here, and will flower, and yes, there will be times when she just wants out-- but it will be worth it. (NO, I would not actually say these things so arrogantly, nor will they be true for every frosh, but I would hope my words proved true. And they might.)
Gods. I know I will see my love often, not often enough, but I know I will see her. Things will change. But we will be together. Perhaps that is why I ache so for Bryn Mawr-- I spent so much effort preparing myself for the loneliness of missing my love, and forgot that Bryn Mawr, in all its parts, was as important to me in other ways. And while I can return to her, I can never be an undergrad at Bryn Mawr again, can never experience more than the four years I've had.
In the coming days I'll be too busy to ache. Good. I need to get away from the loneliness, fill the emptiness. It is only tonight I will feel it so keenly. I pray no one else loves Bryn Mawr as much as I do; it hurts.
I passed beneath the granite arch,
Left behind the slate-gray halls,
Embraced my dear friends one last time,
But now, alone, the silence palls.
And glad for those who now begin
The path I travelled once before,
My eyes return to one last link--
Copied sheets from Elsinore.
So many met within this realm
Inspired my soul to dance and sing.
I found friends from that first bright day,
Both out of fiction, and within.
And so I lived with all my heart.
Two months stretched into four full years
Of joy, of dreams, of love, of hope,
Recalled with wistful, yearning tears.
How strange to think the fiction now
Is real to me as living there;
For both, consigned to memory,
Are things that I no longer share.
Now I have gone, and I am here,
Most glad life there is as before
Save for my absence: but my love
Remains with you, and Elsinore.
Written after my parents moved from the home where I grew up in Pennsylvania's country to the dry rugged benches of the Rockies, looking out over the Great Salt Lakes in Utah:
Green
Was the light flickering filtered through leaves' edges
Gems glittering and swaying on wind whispering in a child's ear.
Green the forest's under-coating, tender trees and this year's shoots
Small sun-tossed bays of ferns, tangled halls of wild rose overarching
Wriggling vines of tongue's treat honeysuckle, blackberries, wineberries,
Mayapple elf-canopies, violets running wild, foxtails bobbing,
A thousand kinds of leafy treasure for a child's eyes and fingers.
Silver, not just gray, was my lady beech tree,
Her rolling roots my playground, her twigs discarded, my magic wands.
Browns sorrel or somber were the earth and columned creaking trunks
Of countless towers of life, oak and maple, in my courtyard growing wild.
Yet the soil sparkled on a summer's day-- did you see?
-- Mica-flecked, when last year's leaves were nudged aside.
Redberry, purpleberry to dye the fingers, wild strawberry
And the every color of flowers too many; I never learned all their names.
Deer drifting through, and fox's flash, and red-necked golden pheasant,
Keening redtail hawk, soaring above the shifting seasons' sea of treetops,
Black crescent-moon tiny batwings dancing in twilight over my face
While the lightning bugs came up as evening came on.
Green all the days and every day, rolling fields and hedges and woods-fronts,
Green and varicolored, sleepy rich and carelessly young.
Now home
White
Is another place,
Bright, high, clear,
Stars near,
Sky wide,
Soft colors pale
Of subtle evergreen
Rock and slanted cliff
Where small dry plants can cling,
If they are willing,
Where small cloven feet can climb,
Though I cannot,
Where gray and pink and slight yellow
Hint in broken stones, vast reefs of cloud,
Far spaces of salt flats, and shallow lakes.
The flowers stand out
Upon dry hills and mountainsides
Among sage pale blue gray green scrub and alpine tapestry.
Magpie's sharp black and white stripes
Sass the wind and rule here.
Most colors are more subtle, rich, and old.
That's the place of home now,
Space to clear the head and eyes.
What colors are there
Where I live?
Above cement and sidewalk, city street and
Unremarkable dust or mud lining each traffic-way?
Oh, every hue,
On houses painted many times over
To the tint of what someone wanted,
A memory of a color they needed by them
Or just happened to have with them.
Old houses, new, sometimes brick,
With many windows looking out, and trellised balconies
Places to play and see the world
Stitched of human hues.
Yet when the nights are cold and long and starless,
But never quite dark,
Or when there ar