Green, the night-worn fantasy lures moths of flame to their destination of darkness. Candles melt, flicker out one by one, in nine breaths from a woman's lips.
The green lizard twists up the vein of the marble neck, freezes into bluish-white, and waits. The sundial casts its shadow across the earth, the trees losing color as they dance until all is wind sleeping in the arms of darkness.
Once invincible gods, standing among cairns, gesture headless, their potency scattered into the stars rushing from the bright point of bliss into the great shadow of silence. The marble torsos beckon, but do not breathe.
And ghosts, weary with deception, pour their form out like silver blood, sinking into the starlight. |
Raised in Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi, Ronald Terry earned an M.A. in English from the University of Southern Mississippi, where he wrote his Master's Thesis on the poetry of Ted Hughes. His publications are not extensive, just poetry in small magazines such as Night Cry, Space and Time, Amanita Brandy, and a few others. In recent years, just for fun, he has experimented with writing free verse and prose poems in the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) language, totally ignoring traditional Old English metrical forms.
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