The Night Mares, by pd lyons

 

 

THE NIGHT MARES

Restless

In a still night

No moon softening

Sharp stars

No cloud drapery.

Against this midnight

The night mares move

Sharing colour with the darkness.

What cannot find them is found by them,

There are no ways secret:

Spiraling stars leave every sky familiar,

Foraging herds by trails of green weeds

Breach every underwater sanctuary.

The night mares

Sleep standing up;

Contain any stallion,

Give birth in the middle of any weather,

Can knock bones, eyes, or internal organs out of any creature.

Simply by their passing

Men have been sucked breathless.

The night mares

Know where dragons come from,

And who, mothered by seas and singing desert sands,

The twin birthed are.

In languages that the thunder knows,

They answer one another.

Navigating easily unbridled,

No boundary deludes them.

Yielding, the only response they know.

 

 

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this first appeared in print in Searches For Magic by pd lyons, published by Lapwing, Belfast 2001. ISBN 1 898472 59 9

http://www.freewebs.com/lapwingpoetry/

Lapwing Publications is a publisher based in Belfast specialising in poetry. It was founded in 1988 by Dennis and Rene Greig. Since then it has published over a hundred and fifty poetry collections.