The Oracle had a message waiting for me.
Purple thoughts
Purple are the night’s fingers
and the sea-fist
that pounds blood from the rocks.
Caught by the wind
it sprays not red
but diamond-glitter rain.
I sit on the bare sand
shot through with silver rivulets
running home
and I think of you
running into the purple dark
one with your shadow.
Selective vision
Through purple lives the petals fall
between cold fingers or hands on fire
like ticking bombs.
We forget, or choose to not recall,
the ugly and the scarred,
only the full-blown beauty of our roses,
selecting words that change
the stumblings of a drunk
to thoughtful tiptoe,
watching for the moment
when all the world will rise up singing
in praise of human kindness,
as if the promised milk and honey
flowed through every door,
and want and famine were just evil lies.
A myth told in 50 words.
Niamh, Oisín and some things that never change
Long years of summers in the apple isle,
bee-humming, sweet with swallow-swoop,
two sun children and a moonchild,
gold and silver, laughter and bliss she gave him.
But being a man it wasn’t enough,
and being a woman she let him go.
The horse she lent him,
being wise, returned.
‘The clouds are blue as angels,’ you said, as we trudged the rutted lane, you in corduroys colour of peat in the rain. But your face was full of the fickle winter sun. Bright as crab apples. ‘There’s ghosts up there too,’ you added, ‘all with their secrets. That’s why they’re blue, so you can’t see through them.’
There were puddles in the cart ruts where frogs ducked out of sight and the wind from the sea bowled over the cliff with its cargo of gulls. Our faces were salted sticky, ears whistled.
Rocks sprouted in the short grass but the wind worked its way around. You climbed one, bending to steady yourself. I scrambled up beside you. Below, there was only gorse before the cliff then the sea.
‘If we were angels we could fly,’ I said, unconvinced.
‘Or gulls.’ You stretched out your arms. Your jacket smelled of tobacco, and I imagined you flapping like a cormorant with wings the colour of sodden peat. ‘But we’re only ghosts with our secrets. The kind that tie us to the ground.’
The wind stuck its fingers in my ears, tweaking them so they rattled like icicles, and I zipped up my jacket.
‘Another reason they’re blue,’ you said. ‘It’s so fuckin’ cold.’
I used the old magnets for my visit to the Oracle. She gave me two messages, one after the other, similar in tone. The Redon painting seems to work with both of them.
Immutable
1.
I am above it all,
the pointing fingers,
the shadow thrown by death.
The heaving sea will always be
purple at sunset, spray will glitter,
but only in the sun,
and you will always be what you were,
beneath the wax mask,
the features that thicken and sag,
you will always be.
2.
I see your face, hair full of moonlight,
and music swells out of the silence.
The raw wind tastes of honey and roses,
and the storm passes over the hills,
leaving the sea satin-still,
smooth enough to walk on.
In response to Kerfe’s Oracle 2 random words.
Light, rock and time
Grass grows deepest in the shade,
where threads of gossamer bind the beams of sun,
light and tight so they never break.
Yet in dark water, unseen currents unravel,
splintering light in star-spangles.
We lift our faces to the ripple-sky above
and peer through waves that pound the rocks
to grains of sand.
How can nothingness be so strong,
the bones of the earth so fragile?
Purple mussels wheeze a plea, lament
for the death of black rock
washed from sea to sea, ghosts of pale sand.
The Four Swans 