A Place That Sleeps

You've come again tonight, to hear of tales, of old ships and sea stories

You've come within my guarded hearth, in the twilight, in the sound of chimes

To hear all about the wonders, dreaded shadow, magic and past glories

The crystal orbs all around have gone dark, but I offer drink, wisdom, and rhymes

A circle of stones, a map on parchment, a compass to guide, a path well lined

Your travels through village and town, and the faces faded into yesterday

If you ask for only but one legend you never heard, I say they come entwined

All you know has roots in connected vines, and trailing past the Milky Way

I often wander through hidden ways, standing far off being alone, I know

You must learn to be present without being known, and listen to all you hear

There you will find the voice that you need, in hour fast, in moment slow

And the keepers of the highest thrones have been seen on low and walk near 

Reckoning within solitude of the memory or myth, where I need to stay 

You stir in your chair and move to the window and your eyes sparkle with light

My eyes follow as you go, it's memory or maybe myth I spoke, you pray

I have heard and I've kept what's carefully wrought, all this within our sight

The world we may dream opens all over, and a call sings out across the sky

And the song is sweeter, should sleep ever awaken under hazy forest

A power in the whirl of wind to passage through rock, you'll know its cry

Let it pass through you, let it flow through you, back to nature's chorus

Looking all around and round the clock, in the stony drop of the new moon

Aloft the trees, abound atop canopies of green, fallen leaves rushing

Keeping your eyes held to hold the vision of the wonders you see bloom

The lilies, the willow's swaying, the legends now clear and trusting

What the last moon of a mossy night conjured from the pages of a daydream

Had leapt from the words to rest inside your mind, and now keep well

But now you sit, quite content in thought, I will in low whispers now seem

Coming from afar while I tell ye the matter of a place where none dwell

It is a realm of the dead, a border that slants outward, oddly sensed but unseen

Their roads align but storms uproot unsettled fragments, falling ember slow

Borrowed from branch and rock, they walk as if they exist not, only in a dream

And they tread and carry on to sleep in a place set into twilight's soul

 

And the king of the seas, king of all things, heard my call as I sailed away then

On a voyage with only a scant few and seagulls from a dark island of bone

The king set forth a ship with sunken treasure and drifted land from dragon's den

To set up and stand between twilight to shield the frail, and live in my soul

To tell you a thing, I have set up a comfortable place as you sink into the chair

I've set up familiar elements in place, what you know, and the matter deep

If you stir and unsettle, I should wave back to the moonlight in lofty night air

And of unknown memory as I speak now of a place that must always sleep

Close your eyes, all sides in the known world can be lost to displacement

Echoing of escape, ringing with rivers unseen, aligning with pathway grim

Entering that world is the void wrapped in the past, to find replacement

The dauntless gloom disguised of its own designs, ghosts follow on a whim

At times it's hard to pass through the night in these parts without being seen
Or walk in the day without being burned on The Thresholds of Perdition

Awhile passages of night slipped by gates of day and railed through the green
Narrow low and aiming for the high peaks in skies of static transmission

Wandering in the glow of lantern reveals overgrowth of thorn and spines

Obscurity is my power, cloaked from shadow moving as shadow and mists

In the overhead of night above the vines a cloud of smoky fog entwines

Even in the Realm of the Dead, sealing of gates with veils of smoke exists

I'd lie awake remembering the clouds of dismal sky's containment and hold

Telling the accounts of time and passage without fading with the ages

It may seem that I barely move now that I hardly breathe this remnant old

Never seen from another side, unknown while the underground rages

The fire cracks, I stare in empty gaze, be it not the desolate paths I seek 

There's always a spark from beyond the boundaries of the realm

Though I have spoken quietly, the effects of its darkest corners bleak

You shall see it's not I, 'twas never me, but the realm under a spell

The figure is of a messenger who came with inkwells and scrolls of his own

He holds multi-fold the lonely lengths of time in stone, this sedentary obverse

You'd wander without any guidance of minutes passing, neither voice or tone 

The dread steps and beats in rhythmic fall, shaking what once was universe

 

Softly dispersing clouds, dull amber masks the air as sleeping ghosts of Venus

Where north waters settle in oceans of Obeia shielded behind the Moon

On a thirteen circlet far, the sun is absent and in time finds a way to leave us

Falling below airs of thickly fog, then sinking below the Sands of Doom

The messenger now with keys unlocks something cryptic beneath the dust

Here one abandoned dark gate is opened on the castle's eerie, empty floor

He speaks of instincts to turn back, echoing the reasoning that you must 

It will be there some will find a hidden hall of darkness past earthen door

 

For beyond certain points, below black still pools, death has this mark

It'll never be one of water, done in wounds or blood, but a single heavy root

The bottommost center stays, the messenger a ferryman who will embark

Never stay for any long hour within its spell, for the voids expend mute

 

Yes I will nod, you may hear far off noise and maybe even voices unclear

This place yet sleeps, in silence it creeps along and away unnerving

The messenger may be called by many names, and by what he may hear

Seize time only to hold a force weighing heavily and always reversing

 

For if it were time to affect its slumber then upon all eyes it can be seen

He will know who returns if only to look, those who may feel the blank face

It makes for a long tale, a night side lament, but of itself leaves no being

He will know who comes back to the place, who restlessly stirs sleep's pace

 

{TBC}

©Iggy 1994-95-96 completed in 2000

Working titles 'Memory or Myth' & 'No Place Everywhere'