The Secret Stead is the pen name of a UK-based writer and
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1. 1. - the Sun burnt the sand
as the dark came, and we sat
watching as the gods camped out
on the horizon lighting their fires,
while our bare feet battled
the shore, the night broke
out of the desires of the day;
migrant swallows stilled to
devotional watchers; as if they were
on a vigil for tomorrow with us;
2. - and as our souls sat
in meditation; our bodies lay
down in invitation,
and I whispered to you
as the night turned cold
and we clung to each other
tightly, like the seaweed
between our toes;
3. - and I told you about
the love of Apollo for Daphne,
whose beauty couldn't be
hidden even when she
was turned into a laurel tree;
and though she refused him,
Apollo had loved her even
past the form of a woman;
4. - and you kissed me then;
as I tried to explain how a god
had become merely a man,
humbled or gone mad from the arrow
of Eros shot from a merciless bow;
and the fruit of the tree was
a bitter-sweet leaf; and she
became a symbol of his honour;
the inedible bay leaf that can
transform food with its flavour;
an aroma on lips, tips to kiss
a laurelled crown: she became
a homage wrapped in a god's
human endeavour of desire;
5. - but as we parted our leaves
in a show of our distinct edibility;
rubbing against a budding tip,
I smelt the very scent of you
in my fingers as you came
into my arms; and crept
into my burning head,
we warmed our souls
by the same distant fire
that guided the night ever
closer to our safe harbour;
our skin burnt all our clothes
and all the thoughts we owned;
6. - in the open you changed
the flavour of the night air;
I felt you ebb as we rocked there
against the other like moonlight
led astray on a stormy sea;
under its single light we docked;
leading our boats to the quay
guided now by a deeper flow,
to unload our daily cargoes
from one to the other; we filled
and emptied equally into
the hold-alls of our being;
logbooks opened at the spine,
eyes wide reading our journey;
Chapter 2: Symbols of the Soul
2. 1. - the sand lay hungry
for the salt of the sea, as I
whispered to you how we
were made this way by the very
language of nature's poetry;
bodies of words so tightly
synchronised in timing;
but more than just rhyming;
feelings enacted with such sincerity
that rhyme wasn't necessary;
2. - our main ingredients
of movement timed with sound
were enough to sustain us:
these two things held us perfectly
in the pull of our gravity:
as you burned on the axis of me,
and turned our world around,
where the night met the sea;
3. - and I told you how
if observers were to take our
verses apart, they would see
the metre of our poetry
is versed ever closely to the beat
of our hearts; each break of line
a new start in this duet
of interactivity; our forms
of free verse unburdened
from all traditional rules,
as we traversed from line to
line naturally, like breathing;
4. - and there could be
no division to our literature;
whether you are the poet,
and I the art of you; or you
my work of grace, beauty
and harmony; did it matter who
created the sea? what matters
is the shape of it; the tide and
the time of it flowing through;
5. - and our storms satisfied,
we began a slower move;
as you urged me lower
to speak some more;
and I said: like
writing, what
matters is to
write well of it;
that we are what we
make it; to let symbols
in our poetry be translated
by the theory of a soul's honesty;
6. - and in between breaths
you asked me the secret
to the nature of a poet;
and I replied that we mustn't be
casual in a poem's delivery; our words
mustn't merely make love;
they must compose it;
they must be of it, and from it,
inseparable like the reflection
in the sea; else a casual love
will make a casual poet
of even the best poetry;
Chapter 3: Tourists of a Dark Sky
3. 1. - and I continued to
take a sip of you; each part of you
a perfect intoxication
for a different occasion; your top lip
that tasted as good as a cool beer
on the beach; or your bottom lip
a golden fire of whisky
to mellow the mind at night;
though drunk carefully;
too much would be to lose
the mind out of sight;
2. - or the softest edge
of your left ear to be tenderly
reddened like wine, during
the candlelit dining; but the fine
line of your right eyelid,
I whispered, was a fiery cognac,
heated best after the meal
had been eaten; to warm
a cooling appetite;
3. - and with our drowsy heads
spinning; you spoke shyly of your fear
of the dark, until our night of bonding;
and I told you to see it
as the climb of an expanding universe,
for when stars collapse night will go,
a blinding light will bring
the end of the world;
but nature will keep ploughing
the deep seas in us like this, until
the earth is laid fallow by time;
4. - and after we unravelled
each other in the mysteries of sharing;
we lay back gazing like tourists
of a dark sky; blazing into the many
just between the two: still so high;
gliding in a collision of delight;
this; a different kind
of journeying than the first:
to a more deeper destination,
constantly moving; shifting
the parts of me and you
as though we were floating
flotsam on a storm-tamed sea;
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at the alignment of solar bodies
joining into place together;
becoming overtures to
harmony; we tracked
the beams of star cities;
pages in a cosmic diary
of mythology; written in
memory of lovers and others
lost by traveller time to dreams
that are part-sailor, part-astronomer;
6. - and off Heaven's table stars fall
like breadcrumbs to souls hungry
for meaning; as we link up our lines
no eye can see, to create heavenly
constellations for our own maps
to sail by; this was our truth; we knew;
and our docked ships still swayed,
gently colliding, until the dawn
awoke the day, and the tide smoothed
out the spray of the shore's foam;
and we made our way back home.
Published 26 January, 2011
Freedom Road >>
