There was a day when light

as bloodless as a pearl
ground to dust 

blew about as freely

as a spring swallow

on winds propelled
with the vigour of by colts' feet,

when a sandstorm of thunder

could light the nooks

and shine through the chinks

held in even the most

sealed of hearts,
confounding the nitre of catacombs
with pelting granules of solidified sun.

There was a season

that seemed like an epoque

where music bloomed

in symphonies of notes,
cobbled together like shards
of ancient stained glass
from gardens of shattered

calm

so silent,

as cutting as a crystalline knife

through the slow burn of glassy flames

a pyre of white buds

framing a hidden spectrum

forged from forgotten lyrics

to love an inspiration;

you must love the skeletons in its closet,

the cracks in the walls of a glass house,

and the darnkess that lies beneath its trapdoor

without knowing when you will fall in

To love the power of a dream

you must hold its space open, 

flung wide with the heels of your hands

out from the heart where your ribcage expands

giving form to a whisper

and risk its collapse

stop thinking about the rubble of your future.

about the charred thunderheads

whose rain never fell

whose lightening only cauterised

the wounds of the clouds

about clipped wingtips

cut too close to the bone

bleeding out and drowning in winds
 whose sails they once had flown

like an doomed egg
stumbling pathetic, ejected
from a nest onto a bed
of rotting pine needles.

or,
you could stare at it;
at the dying embers of a chapter written in soot
(or a name writ in water)

until the imprint of an inevitable pyre has burnt itself to your retina

leaving you as blind as a zen monk's white wall.