Winter Stars

by Steve King

©  2012  All rights reserved

The sky is low with winter clouds.

I cannot see the stars;

my upturned face

at least may touch the winter sky.

I was told each star

is an unclaimed wish:

the heavens’ brilliance

a mosaic pavement

marking paths for derelict desire.

Such promises mean little.

Wishes are more free than stars—

there are longings to outweigh

a universe of light.

I have always held a star apart.

Should I see another one tonight

I know where I would ground its waiting wish.

Soon the earth will shift its heavy airs,

just the way your guarded eyes do change

to capture the next mood.

Then will the winter sky alight…

And then might old desires at last intrude.

Then shall wishes rain from winter stars.

Self Portraiture

by Steve King

© 2005

All rights reserved

I would need a volume to remind myself:

I have loosed all, despite the best intent,

except some given sense of this moment.

Life is too long for the span and spur

of quaint ideals and self-defining force,

faint memories of bold designs

that onetime served to fashion out a course.

I would need an echo to assist recall

even of my solemn

and least random of words:

so long speaking with myself,

I puzzle what it is

that all those others might have heard…

I would plumb the lyric in each dark nuance

and hear old promises remade.

Minor harmonics, left long unsung,

might singly play their parts, now undismayed.

I would need the dreaming of a thousand nights,

winding close upon the ancient core.

There are secret provinces

carved in the heart’s domain,

and passageways to well-forgotten realms

where longings war with unrequited claims;

where best and worst may languish intertwined;

where every stillborn orison,

forever is enjoined.

There would be new wonderings

amid the monuments

of long-forgiven loves

now lingering in their twilight of regret.

I would gild anew the shape

of that less reflective age,

and dredge beneath old shadows

for talismans to strew upon

this now impatient page.

How will I learn to see anew

and intimate of every thing,

of half forgot imaginings

that call in wild archaic tongues?

Or murmur in respecting tones

to render true the softening song

that unsought sudden sadness brings?

I might wake to those dreamings evermore,

and never apprehend a passion

that compelled before.

It is a distant odyssey

to circumambulate one’s past,

and tend to sundry leavings

that were never meant to last.

Still, one treads a landscape

that may never be renounced.

It is a scene alit by vagrant fires,

where brilliance and full darkness do conspire.

And so, the eye does quickly tire…

So… I will need your vision to abet.

Now you must be my ready surrogate

to render out the meanings I invent,

to ratify this sum of vague intent.

I shall speak at large to your desire,

and levy all my thoughts as you require.

The Rushes

by Steve King

© 2012

All rights reserved

Your body bends upon young grass,

a lightness in your limbs.

How may I keep from promising?

You search for heavens

in unfolding clouds.

Portents.

A sign.

The rushes sigh in the least breeze,

and speak all things to you.

You, the silent one who waits,

while I sigh with the rushes;

while I am left to gather my desire

in its own words.

As the young grass

drinks the sun,

so you absorb my promises

‘til I am emptied.

Now flown are all the words,

no portents,

no sign to show a way,

and dumb the rushes when I pause to hear.