love's lingering labours (an excerpt from my novella-poem 'Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons')

(in the middle of the night, in the enchanted arbor, Sylvana is mourning the apparent death
of Sludge White (aka Princess Pasty); collapsed in the shadow of her beloved's bier, draped
in its glowing pink roses.  but the princess, having already experimented with dream travelling,
is attempting to transcend the borders of her subliminal state through the seams of sleep.)
********
the vigil of braided incandescence

was swimming through a lens of intervening grief.

for Sylvana resisted acquiescence

clutching tattered hope like an obstinate leaf;

unwilling to renounce unattainable love

achingly at hand, yet out of her reach,

debris of her dreams and crashing emotions
stranded on a shifting, time-encrusting beach.

kneeling in the mingling amethyst shadows

where residual loss had managed to seep,

she ceded reason to the crickets' drone

and reeling into rhythm, rocked herself to sleep.

a whispered silhouette darted through the arbor

as an ivory owl glided by,

dazzled by the moon's commiserating rays

stringing the pearls that trickled from her eye.

the dream began with a flurry of roses

constantly altering an ambient glow,

diaphanous swirls soundlessly descending,

pink satin petals collecting like snow.

and the princess was buffeted by flowers,

exalted by the deer's devotional dance,

held aloft like a venerated icon

that skirted the earth in a somnolent trance.

Sylvana was perched upon her shoulder

rooted in the angles of a spindly legged bird,

her impassive awareness in dreamtime

readily accepting what reason deemed absurd.

and her heart was beating with wings of its own

at strange liquid words her beloved had said,

like sunlight spilling out of the horizon

leaking tidings that her future wasn't dead.

the herd revived their beguiling patterns,

that same arcane ballet she'd seen them do for Hearn

repeating an ineffable lesson

some lyrical muse must have thought she ought to learn.

her fellow birds delighted in circles

attuned to a cadence beyond the range of sound,

scudding crinkled leaves into a whirlwind,

redistributing the surface of the ground.

a tremor shivered her ambling foundation

as Sludge White abruptly opened her eyes,

flooding the warmth of a riveting gaze

on her dauntless protector in avian guise.

and it suddenly dawned on Sylvana

that this abstract tapestry was framed for her sake,

a subtle stitching of sentient seams

contrived by a presence compellingly awake.

arousing the rosy, silk-strewn ether

a brush of Pasty's fingers dusted off a kiss.

and at that precise moment Sylvana awoke
tossed up on a wave of exquisite bliss.

********
- Evan Hawthorn, the 9th of October, 2015
(an excerpt from 'Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons')