While you are here

While you are dreaming

Of that Cimmerian shade

I am useless but for waiting

Already missing you

Should you ever go

None better dressed than I

Such cheerful rags; much my maker made of me

And yet more in fortune gave, until time’s fickle Chanticleer

Called his third of a vernal April’s day, upon the dew still glistening

Or so I contend – no matter the hour, I went with the dawn

Betwixt her red clouds scudding

~

Painting by Thomas Kinkade

A Watcher Only

Forget me, amid the revelry

The incandescent swathes below

Served from my cups gone cold

Crisp in the heat and haze and glow

Neither envy nor reproaches

Pierce the vibrant compass through

And thrice unheard is to forget

All, save how I miss you

~

Elizabeth Cook, 2016.

Length of Stone

They didn’t listen

When I tried to keep them from the stone

It ground along its groove

And at the sounds within

They mistook dread

For wonder flickering in my eye

Shuffling, he came out as promised

Outwardly hale and yet

I smelled the rot on his wrappings

He smiled at them

And I knew that his smile was

A skull strumming threads of flesh

He would turn to me next –

Realizing this, I evaporated

Back under the hangings

Milha said,

He could follow you, you know

But it had been a long two years

Walking behind him

Now, I held the length of my stride

Dearer than unsought miracles

I tied my bundle tightly

And went out into the desert

~

Elizabeth Cook, 2016

In Autumn of 2015

Wherein the changing face of night

A star may fall astray,

We keep its years of steady light

And love it still by day.

~

On the passing of Michael James O’Reilly.

Image from Earthsky.

Gravekeepers

Champ and stamp and plough the way

No drifts may bury hallowed graves

Though flakes in doubled flurries fall

And moonlight casts its silent pall

We sweep and leap and claw away

To bare the shallow, stony graves

For one is yours, and yours entire

And one is mine, in flood and fire

And one is the grave of Aristo

Whom all have mourned but none have known

His are the softest falling snows

And his are the winds that cease to blow

But champ and stamp and clear the graves

And sing and croak the cold away

The moon spares naught for Aristo

Nor do the sparkling veils of snow

–

Elizabeth Cook, 2014

Orison – 4

Continued from

Orison

Orison – 1

Orison – 2

Orison – 3

~

Even without sight I could tell as the house loomed and I was borne within.

I could only act as myself in part, and could be nothing more than what I pretended to be. On this my life rested. My eyes flashed open once inside, and with a cry I let out all the fear that had been building. The man carrying me did not so much as miss a step. The house was great and empty, and I froze in awe at the room he brought me into. It stirred memories too old to recall. Cushions littered the floor around a low mahogany card table. Divans made a half-circle, and a great harp stood behind them.

I wriggled free. I think he let me do so, for there was no other way out of the room, and I scrambled away across the cushions until there was nowhere left to go, and there I sat drooping but wary, exhausted by the effort.

Orison – 3

Continued from

Orison

Orison – 1

Orison – 2

~

Before a year had passed I was restless. Balsa knew before I did; I saw her watching, and was at first puzzled by the new lines around her eyes.

We were in the kitchen, peeling roots. I thanked her again for all that she had done for me, and asked how I might repay that debt; she replied that it was only right to settle debts before leaving a place. And she set me to bringing in the washing, and taking inventory in the cellar, and cleaning the baths.

It went on for some time. Until Balsa struggled to find new tasks for me, and wore an expression that made me sad and guilty.

I avoided her eyes and their lines. I wondered if it was wrong to go – I hoped that I might stay. But men had made roads that went north, and even had there been no roads I would have been forced to go that way, lest I live without deserving each breath.

Spring turned to summer, and one morning Balsa gave me a bag.

“It is best to go when it is warm.” She kept her face blank and I was torn.

Orison – 2

Continued from

Orison

Orison – 1

~

In a room with white paper walls they asked me if I had any reason to live. If I had, what had I been doing during my time in the streets? What had I been doing with all that I knew and all that I did not know? Why had I not been seeking, tireless as the pole star, after some way – however despicable – to climb up from my impermanent place in the world?

Kneeling, head bowed, I begged their forgiveness.

When I woke I was the weakest I have ever been. I laid there and memorized the straw bed, and the bareness of the room. I could not see out the window. After some time a woman came, and she asked me how old I was. I did not know.

She was Balsa, wide and tall, who kept that inn with no one but her hired help, and who had an old sword hidden behind her bar. They said she had used it before.

Orison – 1

You can find the Prologue here.

I was taken to the house of a relative, a narrow place with many staircases in the midst of the city. At first the bustle tossed me around, but then I learned to dart up and down the creaky wooden stairs, to hide in corners, and when I could not hide I learned how to run errands through streets that teemed with hands and smells and curses.

The meals I had once known were revealed to be elaborate, the rooms I had had played in were revealed to be clean and beautiful, and all was beyond reach.

They talked of money often, in that house with many staircases. By the end of that summer the yelling swelled and at night the air was heavy and unpleasant. As their resentment grew the meals became poorer and I ran more errands, hiding out of the house rather than within.

You could hear things in the streets. I listened, I learned who was safe to question, and I eventually began to ask.