Three Poems by Susan Dale

Marriage Of Seas To Skies

 

Illuminated with dreams of liquid lights
And the coffered domes of sunset heavens
Dolphins and doves on an allegorical bridge
Woven with garlands of seashells and stars
A half-mask of twilight
Then … a blue cloak of night
Thrown across horizons
Imbued with the magic
Of the marriage of seas to skies
Skies lacquered with acrobat stars
Tumbling about the heavens
Rivers flowing into lagoons
And into shadowed canals
Where ligaments of light spill
Into the mezzanine of half-dreams
In the waters reflective pools of moonlight
And while sampans sail the skies
Mermaids swim in moon dust
All united by whale songs
And Saturn’s rings
Currents foam with magical myths
Poems of seas to skies
Pirates bury trunks of stars
Neptune sails on a sliver of the moon
Venus rises from a brooding sea
To sprinkle stardust over oracle’ dreams
And as a crescent moon sails a wayward night
So does a gondola turn the sharp bends
Into the luminosity of stars
Poured into a wild dark
To create silvery blankets in the night skies
And across the earth’s waters

　

Streams of Poems

From the far off skies
mellow with moonbeams
There was I swaddled on
a shooting star
and raced with her
to a planet I felt
pulsating with life.
And burning in her race towards death
The star smoked into ash
before she could tell me
I was a moon child
who once swam in milky-way streams
foaming with the poems
I unknowingly carried to earth
Lost, I wondered and wandered
until a crescent moon gathered me up
in her pale shroud
She missed me, her vagabond child
and sailed off with me
across the night
Across planets and suns, rings and stars
Into the milky way streams
of my bliss
Streams of poems I dove into
Swam with, dove amongst, splashed
And embraced
for all my eternities to come.

Summer, 08

 

Bursting forth from spatial spring

Flesh and blood physicality
Of earth - motherhood
Summoning sacred fires of sunrise
Let them dance
These rapturous roots
Roaming beneath a corpulent earth
In breezy meadows
An empty basket
With fleshy lip and handle to hold
Aching, lonely basket
Longing to be filled
Echoing down hills
The pipes of Pan
Wending through mossy valleys
Entangling with guttural songs of water
Pushing downstream
To smoky-hot July
Unfurling her flamenco blossoms
Yearning-open by day
Tight crimson buds in terracotta sunsets
Within an ornate border of earth and skies
A sun soaked soul
And the volumetric heart of summer



Susan’s poems and fiction are on Eastown Fiction, Tryst 3, Word Salad, Pens On Fire, Ken *Again, Hackwriters, Feathered Flounder, and Penwood Review. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.