Beneath The Millpond

Steven Black Weasel

English 283 (1:00-1:50)

Free Verse

February 14th, 2011

As a voice beneath the millpond sings,

From his past the lost August days are woken.

Through years, where the darkness roars,

Until with whirlpool panic heart he looks,

Out of the looking glass,

And sights the cluster of ghastly ghosts,

Huddled together in familiarity of an asylum party.

In a blurred hurried bliss,

The grandfather sonorously sings,

his cherished chime of thirteenth hour.

Then the audible dissipation,

The summer swallows on the eve of cold.

Bounds breached.

Ripples ring,

As a voice beneath the millpond sings.

Scratched ankles and nail-bitten hands,

Grasped and groped the Johnson locks,

Raven follicles turn to desolate deserts of

White scalp

Lying, pure and pale, bloodless…

As a young stillborn boar, motionless…

Though, cold tears tumble, hopeless.

Through a shared distance of gaps and gullies,

The looking glass reveals the misfortunate,

Proving, that the dead can dance.

Rhythmic rhymes chime the air of barbaric tones,

Until smiles rise the sun of dawn.

Standards shown.

Plucked wings,

As a voice beneath the millpond sings.

Shuffling pond pebbles as he circles jagged rocks,

Caught between linear lines of ideals and illusions.

Appearing apparition to distant spies whilst walking,

Like delicate muscles,

Sleep-walking through shapes that razors blind.

But noise does not abate the essence of ears,

As young geese yawp and squeal above the moors.

Though escaping ebony is filled absence of color,

Flight feathers all but are due to return,

Like cut canvas,

Eager to expel the quintessence that artists fume.

He casts the final skipping stone into the bog of buttresses

Bounds breached.

Ripples ring,

As a voice beneath the millpond sings.