Tag: poetry

The Room Knew How to Look Beautiful

On the broken shelf,
a vase stood still, alone—
porcelain, carved, quietly hewn,

Around it, everything was bright:
paintings hung in careful pride,
furniture polished smooth with years,
cotton pillows, modern windows,
a stately clock, a patient door,
a carpet so clean it seemed untouched.

The room knew how to look beautiful.
It did not know how to love.

No one noticed the vase.

It watched the others
not with envy,
but with the strange peace
of something that had survived
being overlooked.

The ordinary furniture
decided it was wrong—
a disturbance,
a misplaced thing,
too strange for such a cheerful room.

It did not belong, they said.
Its silence offended them.
Its stillness looked like accusation.

So the clock struck heavier.
The door slammed harder.
The windows exhaled their cold breath
against the thin and splintering shelf.

The carpet curled at its corners.
The paintings leaned in their frames.
The whole room conspired—
a polished violence,
an elegant cruelty.

And it was enough.

The old shelf, tired of holding,
gave way.

The vase, once upright and whole,
fell.

It shattered—
each piece a small confession,
each fragment reflecting back
the room it had loved
despite everything.

And inside, where roses
should have rested,
there were no petals,
no roots,
only the soft rot of old neglect,
spider nests,
dust-fed silence,
and the small dead things
no one wanted to name.

Brigid Does Not Come Alone

Place crocus bright beneath the flame,
where golden tongues remember spring.
Let rosemary and bay root low;
they keep the grounded center still.

Drape ivy where the shadows lean,
and fern where listening silence stays.
Around your light let green things climb,
like hope kept breathing through dark days.

If grain remains from autumn stored,
or bread still warm from hearth and hand,
lay each small offering at the base—
for Brigid does not come alone.

She comes with fire, but also bread,
with well-water and living breath;
so dress your altar like a field,
and set warm hands against cold death.

Peace is a Semicolon

The sun spills white as judgment
across the stone.

There, a man lies
stretched on the pavement,
another body given over
to the boulevard.

The marble burns.
But the poor learn early
to take fire
as one more thing endured.

Men pass.
Their polished shoes
speak first,
and never kindly.

No one bends.
No one kneels to ask
whether breath still labors
in that hollow chest.

Nearby, in the charity of shade,
a dog keeps watch.

He knows the arithmetic of streets:
the cruelty of noon,
the patience of hunger,
the brief mercy of shadow.

O brother of dust and gutter,
quiet witness at the curb,
you and this fallen man
belong to the same republic—

that wide country of the forgotten
whose only law
is endurance.

Star Under Cloth

And sometimes—
when ritual hush fell like snow
and the air thickened with older names,
when gestures turned like keys
in locks I could not see—
I felt each soul as a star kept under cloth,
each life a fire sworn to its orbit;
and I knew the terrible tenderness of it:
not all stars are kind,
yet all must burn true.

So you made a temple of me, O light—
not of marble,
but of measured hours and reined desire,
of mercy laid as mortar,
of truth squared to the tongue,
of love obedient to will.
And because you built, you exposed—
for temples gather dust as surely as cottages.
The brighter the lamp, the clearer the dust.
So I sweep, and let the lamp judge.

Deafening Silence

It comes without warning,
like snow deciding the forest has said enough.

No hush, no shhh—
only abrupt vacancy
where small sounds once rented rooms.

The clock, once ticking like nervous fingers,
now pauses between seconds,
unwilling to be first to violate the truce.

In this wide, white room without echo,
even memory moves softly,
careful not to wake the next thought.

Silence is not absence.
It is a different density—
the weight of everything
that was nearly spoken
pressing inward against the ribs.

Here, grief finally releases its breath
without excuse.
Here, joy learns
it does not require an audience.

Stay.
Let the hush complete its long sentence.
It has been composing it
since the first word learned how to sound.

The Trial at Breathward Keep

In Breathward Keep, where cedar lanterns burn,
The Council sat beneath a vaulted turn
Of stone that held an elder, waiting air—
A hush made weight of oath and prayer.

The Hierophant stood, staff fixed like a line;
The Veiled One watched, her silence fine.
A Scribe named Justice held the iron quill;
Strength kept the threshold, straight and still.

Young Aldren came, road-stained and drawn,
The Book clasped close like borrowed dawn.
He loved its hush more than a Chair;
He feared the Dark that thinned the air.

“Show us thy art,” the elders said.
He set the Book where light was spread.
He drew his circle—swore too loud
That fire would serve and not be proud.

He spoke a Name. Flame answered sweet—
A dragon coiled in furnace-heat.
It rose, a crown of living brand,
Obedient—then left his hand.

For air remembers how to lean.
A valley-breath slipped in unseen;
It tipped one instant, red and bright,
And bent his dragon out of right.

The ward unspooled; the rafters caught;
His thunder fed the blaze he wrought.
One page-edge browned. One letter charred.
The Book endured—but pride burned hard.

The elders stirred. The Veiled One spoke.
Green silence fell; the dragon broke.
The Hierophant’s calm Word laid claim;
Ash settled where had stood the flame.

The hall held breath. The village stilled.
Aldren knelt—ambition spilled.
His iron certainty ran thin;
He felt the fracture lie within.

He touched the singed and trembling page
As one who knows the cost of rage.
The Chair seemed small. The Book seemed vast.
His borrowed brightness thinned and passed.

Before applause could gild the loss,
He wrapped the Book and crossed
The outer gate, unnamed by flame—
Leaving behind both seat and name.

The hidden Art is wrought in patient Breath;
One Still Word bars the gates of Fear and Death.