by Jim Curtis

Created on: August 30, 2009

The Alchemy Of Dawn

There was no valley anymore.

It had been absorbed

Into a solemn, gray-white sea.

Had I not known that there

Beneath those churning waters

Were fences, barns, and fields,

I might have thought those seas

Ebbed and flowed above a reef

Where gold and glistening gems

From foundered ships

Lay lost amid the sands

Where children of the mermaids play.

Even as I stood and stared I saw

There in the sea's thick fogs

Two mounds of leathery curves emerge

As black and threatening coils

That undulated slitheringly

Through the pusillanimous light.

Had I not known that there

Beneath the dragon's length

A small farm pond and springhouse sat,

I might have feared the beast

And sought some noble way

To run him off to make the valley safe.

As much as I enjoy the days and sun,

They sadly lack the magic of the dawn

Whose drifting haze and misty ways

So shift the slanting solar rays

They make things more obscure than clear.

Such freedoms taken with the light

Free my mind to see whatever it conceives.

With day, at noon, before or later,

The world is too well lit, too real.

The heady substance of the day is like a wine

That first attracts and then inebriates the mind,

And then enchains a soul that should be free.

Learn more about this author, Jim Curtis.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.