Lament of the Cairns

This flesh-clad flame,
thrown into the
winding and unwinding
gasp of empty breath of
darkness. This earthbound
grief of ghost and bone
giving voice to
the numbered
sorrows of abandoned flesh
and whispering the tears of
forsaken light.

The broken silence of stones lies
swollen with longing in
the slumber of history
and the smudge of change.
Their distant faint chants
hang like low gray smoke
on a tattered bruised horizon.

Raw stones thrust into a black convulsing sky,
declaring the rise and rule of flesh,
whose fire consumes a boiling sky
and heaving cracking earth
and the tides of sea and moon and fertility.
Stones, victims of gravity, silhouetted against
a failing sun, crimson and pink tendrils
flailing desperate and gasping in the plunge
to the unattainable horizon. In the
flickering fire and snapping sparks,
a dance of loss and defiance, as the dark clenches
the sky. Flames and hymns give tongue in the
quest to capture light and fertility in the smooth worn
rings of stone.

Empty eyes, tearing the
betrayal of ghost and blood,
of the untouchable blue of sky
beyond the trembling
grasp of sight and frail hands.
Flesh and hope,
gasping for the lightning
that splits the dark and
brings a midnight sun that burns
sight with loss, weeping and mourning
the betrayal of prophecies;
of holly and oak,
of blank tablets,
of miraculous birth and
glimmering ascension, of breaking the
covenant between bone and light, of
an opening in the fabric between stars,
allowing the flame to pass through though
the sky mumbles its
discontent and rejection.

Lightning from pale bloodless voices,
flat sounds, that fail to ripple a placid azure sky that
laments the chains of gravity and weight of stones.
The stone rings stand, jagged and listing, tilted in nauseating vertigo,
grieving the rub of days, blinking their earthbound eyes,
stinging in the rise of sun, a
mocking light unfettered by weight and doom,
empty of the betrayal of flesh and lost redemption.

The nothing that we are and
the nothing we will be,
but flesh-captured flame,
rears and rages at the
encroaching darkness
and shifting sky,
that ignores sacred stone
and blissful hymn.
Yet the dark beast of nothing
curls at our feet
and licks gently our
trembling hands.

The hurling rush that
spins us from the longing green and
gold of hope, of earth and heaven
twirling indifferent and aloof,
yet our tears and blood mark
each passing light and
relentless tide. This
passing, a lunar eclipse in our
transient eye.
We glimpse a moment
beyond our sight,
of silver glowing shadows dancing
beyond the fabric of night.
Now the frozen, frosted moment
that carries us sliding into
the swallowing darkness is hollow
and silent before the standing
stones and dimming flame.

The bursting infernal
that we are,
just flame and heat, despairs
to find this nothing lingering,
steps ahead in the gloom and
shifting light, that no urge of
tide or fertility can negate.

All this and the nothing that we are,
but defiance of stones and voice.
Still, the hands grow feeble
and fumble through solemn ritual
of ghost and incense, of blood and fertility
to stave off the
the licking darkness
and the inevitable dwindling
of the flame, to hold us
in this static moment.

Stones as flesh, wilting and powdering in the
endless caress of sea. Water and tide whispering
the love song of birth to dumb still stone. Yet
the fondling sea eventually, in the uncoiling of
infinite days, caress stone to nothing.
Deep in the golden heart of morning, sea and rock
and sun birth more that rock and sea and sun.
Without promise of light but grief of sight beyond flesh,
the bloodied contractions of birth of flesh-clad flame are doomed
to travel knowingly towards the all consuming dark.

But our sorrowing flesh,
blind to the promise beyond the skin
of darkness, despairing over
the rush that is
the nothing,
are captured
and slid along
the dwindling way,
till annihilation swallows
the flickering
flame.

Yet in one last futile blaze,
for one short, sweet breath,
the dark forbidden horizon
is illuminated, clear and
crisp for all to see
but is then swallowed
by the dark beast, crouched
at our feet, licking gently our trembling hands
and only silent shadows and
darkness reign.

Until sea and stone and sun
once again give birth to more than
themselves, without promise
and through the darkest reign,
flesh-clad flame, enraged and defiant,
fleetingly illuminates the
distant, unattainable horizon.