if i were a sound

the sunlight pestered the evening far into the furthest hills,
bled across the horizon and teased in soft threat
the same shrill a creature is like to make
when murdered by colors-
if tones and shades
can truly kill.

if these syllables of words and symbols of communique
could mostly bleed and tether imagination
so what say then poesy dishonest?
dare it diminish the Idyl?
if truly the image
reflects the same.

nay! the songs are not the music, the water is not the brook
babbling, but instead the motion of hillsides drifting down
sweats of a thousand years- the moment's resolve
to come again and again and dangle
the spirit of Eternity off
some nervous ledge,
some ugly brink.

but since it is gone, and since it is lost in some distant memory
outside the spirit, outside the reflection, outside the innermost
shadow of the forgotten cave- since this moment did
never exist fully in this dream
ephemeral as it may be
as endless as the sea's
yawn and stretch

the words of this dimension are but fleeting blows of death
in the wind recounting beauty from a favored score
heard so many nights ago, in the lore of a sweet
smell in a small kitchen and heat itching
the stove and her steps laughing
across the pine boards
painted with dust.

and if it were never possible that silent abandon exited vast prisms
and existence, never stalled and never became colors
capable of drawing-in smoke from the distance,
then all this time wasted in words
was worth every image and each
appalling death made
truth of every breath.

find you what in solace, really, that chaos does not well provide?
what license entitles the fog to wither inside the dawn
or the moon to find the shadows alarmed in deepest
dark- is this the grave of light? tortured spirit!
now raptured in delight, in between
the lazy charm of echoes
creeping among the hills.