September 17, 2021 - Steffen Blake
Pale Moon
Clouding breath and whispering eyes,
Shivering fingers clenched as fists,
Stuffed deep in clothed vestige.
My jacket offers little respite,
Each pace draws me deeper,
Each glance a bit steeper,
Into the frozen night.
Echoes and steps on bygone pavement,
The cracks and breaks of days gone past,
Under her gaze, The Pale Moon.
Craven frost shines in the grass,
Barren trees gently sway overhead.
The starlight recedes into the sea
Of the inky black night, too soon
Into a primeval playground of stone and metal,
My journey softly halts.
Concrete gazebos and rusted bars,
Nestled in a field of icey dew. I know this place, but cannot name it,
Perhaps a memory of days unlived.
My mind seeks mornings of mirthful joy,
But finds naught but grasping at smoke.
Oh moon! Why have you shown me this time?
Who’s past do you entertain?
I stare up at the sky, and in my mind’s eye
I feel emotions well from within.
Framed in that night, oh frosty and slight,
A picturesque scene I recall.
The cold fog in the air gave rise to a sight,
The trees arms encircling her light,
I’m left breathless before The Pale Moon.
Soft snow gently twinkles through this scene,
Gently falling and twisting, reflecting and glinting,
If I close my eyes now, I can still recall it,
That majestic beauty, The Pale Moon.
My breath catches sharp,
The welling tears come to a halt.
A secret dark has crept on me. Something draws near now, creeping and itching,
A primordial force is at play.
I cry out as the pale moon is swallowed by night,
Her ivory shine collapsed whole.
Grey and blue awash my sight,
And I can hear voices softly whispering.
“You are not safe here, oh child of man”
“Who dares to sail into doom?”
My heart races and I resume my pace,
And down that battered pavement I hurry.
Each step takes me deeper,
Each breath I draw steeper,
The shadows surround me and my pace becomes unsure.
I cast my gaze about, lost within doubt,
This barren and haunted domain I naught recognize.
I have been transported to a place beyond reason,
The Realm of the Unknown.
Darkness parts and gives way to a new cold night,
But in a world I cannot place.
Filled with great looming and cracking architecture. An ancient palace of broken balance,
With charred churches and bedraggled roads.
Perhaps once a place of piety,
But now just a forgotten echo of times long ago.
One great oak tree with a crack down its midst,
Stands tall in the misty square.
A force against time, of worlds gone by,
In the center of this realm.
I stand still unmoving, my breath caught in my throat,
At the sight I do behold.
For hanging bright above this barren world,
Shines not one, but two Moons!
The first I recognize, my companion Pale Moon,
But the other is alien and unknown.
I do not know this Moon, it is foreign to I,
Blood red it hangs, bathing the night in crimson.
The Red Moon, he sings a song to me then,
One of fear and curdling chill.
Then she whispered, “Begone child, this place is not for you”
And clad in sweat, in my bed, I am awakon.
< Tell us that one from the other day