Curtain

The bedside lamp will soon be out,
Books and papers stowed away,
And swathed in sheets and darkness
I will peer out at the sway
Of the veil between the nights.

From flitting curtained heights
To mystic sails skimming floor,
The veil is the guardian that separates
Night the Wild from Night Indoor,
Barrier of deep from deep.

I am blanketed and bathed in rest,
Thoughts and feelings stored away,
The lamps of dreaming now are lit.
The veil will peer in at the sway
Of hair between my sleeping breaths.

They are waiting in the darkness.
The ground is patterned with light
crawling through the pines overhead.
The coolness in the doorway
brushes the small hairs on her face.
The spiders sleep in their webs.
They make no sound.
Heavy crisp bodies
with fullness of gravity weighing them.
Black, living splinters, spindly and shining.

She steps into the room and
the cages creak.
The webs are bouncing
as the legs flash and dart,
Step, step, stepping for the sure footing,
running gracefully on
the wooden beams:
the well-worn paths.

The needles strewn
on the hard-packed floor
writhe underneath as they gallop towards her.
Spine and shine and
sharp fingers waving and tapping.

She kneels down and
welcomes them
into her arms.

Little lily filly Light white, inside the night. Peppered pink and pulsing muzzle. Flicking ears. Tricking feet. Fancy dancy flying In the thrashing grassy tussocks With the moon looming wide. Heated beating breast. Knuckley buckled knee kicks. Falling, rolling, wholey unknowing That someday she will miss this bliss.

She sleeps
soft and buried,
under blankets, over pillows.
All around her sounds of hurried
mouse paws prancing on the tiles
warm and live, their tails
are swimming like her dreams,
their squeaking is lost to her mind.
Her body heavily breathes.
Inside, the colors are creating
patterns for her pleasure,
while another melody is playing
to which her mice's
tails are swaying.

But now they lay together
in a shaded brown tuffet.
Each little rise and fall
of every tiny chest warms
the room and sets the
frost on the window to
dripping and puddling on the sill.
Then she awakes into a
soft warm world full of
whiskers and pillows

In the Offing

In the Forests of her Dreams,
She gives life to all the Secrets
That are blowing through the leaves.
She sings alone among the trees.

In the Meadows of her Mind,
She ambles through the Memories
Of regret and joy entwined,
Leaving faint traces none will find.

In the Ocean of her Heart,
Soft, timid Loves swim in the brine.
Shyly–they, to shadows dart.
She quiets, lest again they start.

In the Tower of her Soul,
Forgotten Treasures must she guard.
In the silence bright tears show,
Burning her cheeks like lighted coals.