Diamond Dust

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