The Enchanted Mill | Poetry and Prose by Purplemoondoll

My thanks to Mike Coxe for allowing me to feature some of his incredible poetry here at The Enchanted Mill.

THIS CREATOR

This creator is an enigma:
irrational perhaps,
full of maybes, could-bes, perhapses.
Could we halt his creations?
Sling some tempered steel
to the turning wheel?

Ask no questions on that score
all the answers are mislaid memories
slunk back along the anxious alleyways
and the febrile footpaths of time.

This creator is a restorer of lost pictures
a reminder of wings and beauty
peril and glee
of whom we once were
and who we will be.
And singing, singing
celebrates impermanence
as much as all eternity.

Once [or twice, or thrice] upon a time
he traced a sign
within the virgin sand
and, despite his crisp denials,
water glistened in the tracks
of his finger’s glide …
and somewhere
along this cold wet wall
the mind-child,
man-child sighed
and wrote his name.

Creation hurts.
this creator cannot save us
but makes us worth saving;
makes our passing mourned
and, almost as an afterthought,
his own.

IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW

In case you didn’t know
I’ve been inside your head
shared your sorrows
shyly known your joys

I cannot tell the hour or day
when strolling through a reverie
I first turned that hidden corner
of my mind. And found you there.

It seemed that, unbeknown to you
you’d wandered in
found a soft and cosy place to lie
and sojourned there

You would not, could not say
how long you’d slumbered.
Was it hours?
or did you first slip in
when lone Adam lonely strode
the glades of Eden?
Were you always there?
Waiting?

Though I cannot say,
since in my mind we spoke only
with eyes and hands
and soft, soft skin.

In case you didn’t know
I’ve loved you long
and love you still.

POLAR ROSE

Your smile flutters, falters and fades,

and your translucent eyelids

turn dull as crumpled tissues

as they crease tight closed:

in a whisper

a mere cough from a whimper

you ask me to leave.

In a voice more fragile than moonbeams

You murmur your sorrow and sinless blame:

your rose is frozen,

cup caged in curled fingers

screened from sight.

How so?

Did a culmination of drear autumn chills

bring this sad and silent stillness

or maybe a flash-frozen wintry finger

fast petrified this bloom.

I move your hand aside, cupped still,

and note a sudden sharpness in your stance.

You will not look with me

upon the tight shut petals

ice-bonded hard and stiff

and though the colours softly bleed

from blush to flame

they are brittle, brittle and over-bright

as though the slightest touch

could crystallise and crumble

or crack and bleed.

Watch. See how I cradle

with two hands, gentle … gentle …

and barely frame this blossom, bend,

open my lips and ‘haaaaah’

my hot and humid breath

across these frosty glacial contours,

and ‘haaaah’ again and again

to free to the very depth

these captive polar convolutions

and soften to silk and satin

these rigid frigid whorls of pain.

It melts! It melts!

Your eyelid’s flicker tells your joy.

The gelid interstices dissolve to dew,

the furls uncurl, open, bloom

and, gasping, gape apart

and give as gift a musk miasma.

My slightest kiss

and lightest travelling tip of tongue

Delves deep within the candid coral core:

Ah, the taste, the scent, of surging seas

And a jubilant sunlit summer rose.

LEGACY

Mother’s memories crackle, crystallise and coalesce
entangled in familiarity and days-end prayer
and flesh out well-known bones of oft told tales
to make a man for me to love.

A restless reckless man
who hullabalooed down hairpin-riddled hills
amid the war free carefree days
in a red and rollicking rooster of a car
to the singing swaggering inns of Wales.

A loving gentle man
who framed a kiss-me face in miner’s hands
while fear-strained peace hopes upped and fled
and tough and tender wooed and wed his willing lass
in cool cathedral mountain ferns.

A brave and gallant man
who, smiling, shoulder slung a sailor’s sack of hope
in the proud and patriotic duty days
to test his pit man’s mettle on the sour and sullen seas,
and save his wife, his Wales, his world.

A tearful frightened man
who woke fear-slimed and shrieking from his dreams
in pitiful shore-leaves meant to heal
and in the sobs of his sick and once-seen son
heard blazing screams in ice-bound seas.

A careless luckless man
who eased his guard in safe and sheltered sunlit seas
Caribbean cradled close by the shore;
who, laughing, failed to spot the lethal sharking shape
which shattered peace and skin and bone.

And I shall learn to love this man
though speaking ‘father’ snags my tongue
and all his substance but a mother’s memory gift
seeking a son’s echoes among the prayers:
Her imagery is my legacy, nevertheless:

Good night, God bless.

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