Picture: Morrigan, shape shifting Celtic goddess. Credit: aminoapps
CHIMERA.

You take my hand and kiss my lips
then like a starburst you are gone;
flown on psyche's coloured wings
to outshine the dazzling sun.
And when I find you once again
where, as night's dark mares hold wake,
you rest; tranquil as the moonlight
reflected on a still, deep lake.

And sometimes like a timid deer
and sometimes like a butterfly
you change, fearing to know yourself
while I must love you constantly.
Though you may come as summer's nymph,
clothed in colours of Lammas - day
or as a sullen silent shade
cloaked and cowled in sorrow's grey.

In memory's cavernous fears
where monsters haunt your sleepless head
whispering with voices from the past,
wearing dead faces that you dread
to drive you a million miles
from the sanctuary of my light,
love's timeless, purifying flame
will always guard you through the night.

 

Chimera: A shape - shifter, a fabulous creature, an impossible fancy

Lammas day: festival formerly held in England on Aug. 1, when bread baked from the first crop of wheat was consecrated at Mass.

Mare: though we usually think of nightmares as simply bad dreams, in old English mythology a mare was any kind of monster thus night's dark mares here are the chthonic monsters that prowl the dark world when we cannot sleep.