By Joseph Armstead
Breathe in, breathe out…
You can smell it in the air,
That scent of rain and regret,
The perfume of bittersweet
Memory
And old dreams vaguely
Recollected.
It imbues a strange feeling
In the soul, a stirring
Of melancholy for
Things that can never be,
And it creates its own
Moonlight, transforming
The harsh metallic silver
from the gloomy evening
sky to the color of
gun-metal when you stare
down the barrel.
It’s there, that feeling,
That smell, that sound,
That music without
Melody.
It stays with you long past its time.
The ticking of the clock is meaningless.
There is only that
tremorous feeling
just before the tears
begin to fall.
Despair a’birthing.
The mind becomes a
window on the world
and the world is a large
wild forest of midnight,
full of night-magick and
mysteries and it is both
a refuge and a prison.
A wind birthed from
Nowhere
Springs up and rattles
The dry leaves of the
Forest of shadows
And you swear that in
its rushing hush you
can hear your name and
that breeze brings with it
an aroma, the
perfume
of a broken spirit.
Imagine that…
Breathe out, breathe in.
