As the moon slides past midnight,
The star studded sky
Sprinkles its diamond dust
On slumbering boroughs,
Unbeknownst to sylvan dells, thickets
And murmuring streams.
***
Then in dreams
Regal Fate
Casts her stellar spell,
Stepping down
To kiss li’l ones,
A Wiccan wand, she waves
The broken-hearted, to bewitch,
And mend teary smiles.
***
After this momentary respite,
An hour or two after midnight,
Whispers the sleepy sun
Into the ears of the fleet-footed night.
“Morn is again come;
Douse, I must
your star-splintered,
Shimmering veil.
And dip it in the rosy haloed dawn.”
***
Betwixt this witching hour
We espy
The night hurriedly steers
The silken reins of
Fate’s burnished Chariot away.
And so,
The night tip-toes away.
The silvery slice of moon
Eventually understands
That its stillness must be broken
By the first cock’s crow.
***
Thence, every night
Fate is wont
To descend
In night’s solitude
Down the haloed beam
To patch and darn
What’s broken
And fix this millennia
or that, chanting,
“What’s broken is meant to be
Fixed, in the wee hours of daylight,
The darkest hour that thwarts destiny
Is magically lit by celestial light.”
***
A fragile moment this is
To return every night,
Fate, in her stellar magnificence, then
Mounts her winged chariot
Returning to the swirling cloud burst
And spectral nebulae.
**************
Mumtaz N K
01-10-2020
Poet’s note:
Fate in European literature is depicted as a whore; I chose to rewrite a myth, subvert a stereotype. She descends in the darkest hours to bestow mercy, her regal bearing and warm motherly acts contradict her previous images of being whimsical and frivolous harlot. She mends torn fates, guides the down trodden or miserable by working mysteriously with constellations and orbs, yet as dawn approaches she vanishes into swirling star dust.
*********
Picture Courtesy: http://www.thehalovault.org/2017/02/observing-diamond-dust-halos-at-bila.html
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