Prologue …

It was difficult to know anymore; this secretive undertaking had a century’s old reputation as one that devoured most who sought to attain its lofty pinnacles. Folklore spoke of those victorious encountering lights and a flowing angelic entity of yielding beauty. The morning of my departure I began the journey steadfast, and hopeful …



And when at last my
Weary feet crested the final crag,
I heard a dulcet exhaling from a sphere
Of eddying colors

. .. She breathed. .. .

And her breath was the
Tintinnabulation of crystals
Resonating in my ears …

“Translucent of an echo, far
Deeper than a soul can starve,”
She spoke softly.

I felt her lungs fill my skin
With scrimshawed crimson,
Dying to be,
To carve out,
Any heart more tender than mine.
And she must have been cast,
Cire Perdue for upward palms,
And out of voices
- Honeyed –
Hers alone shone eternal;
A string of pearls as
A blinding white of paint. …
I must have heard the echoes
Tongue unleash empty and
Eloquent as silence
Falling. ..
falling...
Her silky voice whispering:
“My mountains carry you farther,
Beyond all that you know,
Beyond all that you are …”

A wave of bliss curtailed my breath.
She was exposing my heart through rust
Rendered lips, bleeding humility,
Numbly existing on the silvered
Lining of soothing words; feebly
I fell upon my knees gasping;
Fraught in mind,
Undone in spirit;
I attuned my ears …

“Break for me,
Become pale and radiant
Beyond invisible beauty,
BE. ... …”
She echoed.

Deeply my eyes
Drank the mesmeric vision,
(Lines blurred and blended)
Emblazoned in lapping folds of ether,
(As the upper air breathed by Olympians)
A seamless melding eager to drown with
Blanched bones in a sepulcher where the
War sword had once been raised red as
An Iris in mercurial ash …

In the next seconds
(With lissome fingers
Braiding spirals of light)
She faded slowly back into
The vortex of eddying colors.
Smiling; she whispered tenderly:

“Live quieter,
Proclaim peace,
Love one another!
Forgive one another!
Move on from those
Failures (with others) that
Incarcerate the heart in bitterness!
Think of heaven as velvet echoes,
As redemption’s recluse,
As the sound of wisdom singing
Like the purest obsidian salvation,
Remember to hear beyond the spectrum;
Revive words downed and sleeping;
Illuminate the vanishing day to
Long embraced innocence …
Remember, too, that many
Are watching, and that
You are loved more
Than you will ever
Know”
       richardlloydcederberg.com