Travelers Welcome

Travelers Welcome

Thursday, April 16, 2015

The Thorn of Neptune

by Christina Murphy

A surfeit of cold waves marks the twilight
with strains of silence and endurance;
random particles beset by harm
move closer to the gritty space between
heaven and the imagination;
the shadows of air conclude with praise—
broken music, pure and wild, and obscure beginnings
near the despair of a ragged moon
The changeling appears as long bones laid out in winter,
the thorn of Neptune rising as an eagle, longing for the shore,
cryptic runes as pure as lilies in the serpent’s embrace;
rivers blossoming on a stem, and far, far away,
the edge of northern skies inexpertly drawn,
the broken images of stars in the dark time,
returning home with mystical emptiness;
here in the moon-shadows by the roadway
nothing from something is revealed—
the constant fool in purgatory wishing the fields
were butterflies in moonlight, not the sad panorama
of dark woods alive with soft mocking

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