From the Balcony

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

i.

Through all seasons,

peering outward from the high window,

he would watch the boats.

On they came

through clinging fog,

curtains of rain,

breaking through the crowning sun,

and out of deepest night,

with horns, lights

and strange dancing nautic grace,

gliding beneath sheltering stars

emerging to his view

as if the stirrings of dream.

Familiar constellations shown upon them all.

Only the moon would change its face,

although he knew it dragged the stubborn tides

in some promise of larger constancy.

Unchanging stars alone made perfect sense.

ii.

The manservant brought wines

appropriate for every season.

They drank to the hours,

and to the stars,

and for fair seas and warming winds

to usher every pilgrim home;

and to the dreams of coming ships,

and to great beauty as it once had been.

iii.

‘She’ll know me, even now,’ he said.

I have the pictures yet.’

‘And you have the letters.’

‘Yes, musn’t forget.’

‘The letters.’

‘You have them safe…’

‘I have them.’

‘Yes, most; but there are still a few…’

iv.

The sea changed every night,

the color and the call,

the mass of harbored boats

strung with lights

that traced a captive swell.

‘Shall I turn on the light?’

‘Easier to look out through the dark. 

I can see the farthest reach that way.

I will know her when she comes…’

He paused to dispel a nearing cloud.

‘…and she will need no beacon.’

v.

And so the many seasons went,

and many servants in their turns,

and endless boats and sheltering stars

reflected in the slipping tides.

And staring far through forgiving dark

to feel good seas and take fair wind,

he waited on a gentle dream

now grown ever close at hand.

And in the measure of his dream

he held a gaze so patiently,

to linger long on beauty lost,

someday to find his shore again.

Abiding without place or end,

great beauty as it once had been.