So the story goes: Glámis, the bride

By | 14 December 2009

So the story goes: Glámis, the bride
was a sad one when he was found by the tide
veiled seaspray, dead urchins
daughter of ambition, queen of blood
sickened by the dark fate of her deepest love
Sickened with herself. That it should come to this!
The flowering of waves on rock, her fruitless searching
for the survival, in part for the survival
in part searching, endlessly searching
and almost never finding, save for this last
sour sweep of jetsam from the seawrecked past
was the vessel of vision unevenly loaded?
At the tail end of dusk.
A siren song keening against the tempest of her mind
was she a bride still or must she seek out another
occupation – a teller of bridal tales, perhaps,
tailoring these veiled tears
Had been there before
A green Bette Davis sits under it
murmuring vain words of consolation
of sorrow, of tomorrows, of treasures lost and found and the fine
     edged abyss of bliss
The tint and glint of shimmering threads, of what could be a fair
     maidens bed never captured Glamis’ eyes–only the
     embroidered flags of Ran’s bellowing ships.
At length a white gull from afar alighted on a rock,
out of a small pale dusk at the edge of the world
and started chewing on a piece of seaweed;
she remembered this: storm-swept coastlines, her wine-coloured shorts
and sixpence worth of dulce in a small white paper bag
held in miscellaneous regard
undying grey lady gazing from the castle’s haunted windows,
     the bridal chair left unseated,
     her bloodied bare arms torn like silk caught in briars
The seagull paused, cleaning its beak on the rock, and spoke in a clear, bell-like voice.
Take up your pride girl and find your strength of spirit, all is not lost to you.
     For within you resides all you need to rise up and seek out a new love,
     a new strength to keep the species alive and to refresh the stagnating joy
     in your broken heart.

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