October gold rolled down across the valley
Set fire to the moorland putrefied the summer roses
Cut the Lifeline.
I somnambulist walked the moors, saw the hues
Tasted the mists, breathed the rancid air- embraced it in my lungs
I welcomed the ritual of the seasons, I had no fear of death
Death is nothing to be afraid of my friend, see it not as the end, merely as the beginning.
Strange voices whispering through the boughs of an ash-dead spruce
Had October gold severed my lifeline.
Yea though I walk- first it was a voice whistled on the wind
And the valley of death come unto me
the voice strengthened until it became a choir of heavenly angels
Fear not thy destiny-lay down the misted shroud that marks the path to the golden sepulchre.
Stop the voices I cried in terror
Stop the voices! Stop the Voices
I am too young to die
I have no staff to guide me through this cavern of darkness.
I shall not succumb to my fate- Give back to me
The light of life.
The hands that first betrayed me-
The human hands that cut the cord at birth
The hands reached out to embrace me.
I clung to the naked flesh and was received.
The breeze softened for a moment
The hypnotic trance was broken
October passed swiftly over the valley
And my destiny was fulfilled.
Alison Jean Hankinson
Image from Wikimedia- Title: Moorland above Attadale With Lochcarron across the loch, left. By Toby Speight
http://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/608
For d’Verse (d’Verse expressionism ) meeting the bar an attempt at expressionism? Bjorn stated “The simplest and most effective way to define expressionism is that you present the world in a totally subjective perspective. Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality.”
So I have revisited something I wrote many years ago and attempted to do this.
This seems like a birthing rather than a dying with the hands reaching out to embrace.
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Your words captured on line one and carried me onward. Beautiful!
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So many powerful images captured in this…tasted the mists, strange voices whispering through the boughs…ghostly and eerie.
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This is an eerie mix of nightmare and Psalms… the last two lines an epitaph
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Loved the senses in this piece
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This is a wonderful walk, and I can sense how much you have let the text be matured. The images of colors and separation is very strong. Not a death but that proximity you sense with birth.
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The strict religious element gives the poem a sort of terror, flaming swords and avenging angels type of terror. I like the way you incorporate the fear of death into the death of the year, yet life continues, always.
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an impressive tangle of expressiveness – I like the way it flows in all directions like the wind
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Life and death in one moment, interesting poem.
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Life and death, so closely twined ~ I am glad of the miracle at the end ~
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