The Dawning

The Dawning

By: Jonathan G.

The rooster unfurls and crows at daybreak,

Baton tap for the morning overture.

Percussive koi pop hungry in the wake

Of a flippant, fledgling wren’s loosed feather.

Honey bees work in a buzzing ballet,

Tulip toe-points and primrose pirouettes;

While butterflies resplendent flit and sway,

Tears from a rainbow pure and delicate.

Yard dogs curled, shivering in shadows wait

Patiently for the warmth of dawn to break

Over the Blue Ridge Mountains’ stolid gate -

Aurora’s kiss to soothe the midnight shake.

A sunrise symphony’s timed crescendo;

A lover’s tender heartbeat, soft and slow.

Cocytus

Cocytus

By: Jonathan Garren

Where is our Eden?

Not this tapestry of Nature clothed,

The barren resplendence masked 

Beneath budded beguile and

Perfumed blush, the sibilant

Tongue of a wind divine

Bearing the fruit of Spring’s resurrection.

Where is our Eden?

A symphony of sanctity led

By the Anemoi’s song,

Lone bellows, murderous brothers all.

The other canceling the other,

Canceling the other to non.

Where is our Eden?

Woven amongst the reeds of Cocytus,

Rueful for the sins of our bearers -

Oh amenable father, hapless mother

Where is our Eden?

If not plowed fallow by your dreams,

Thirsty for the tears of our reclamation.

Bradford Pears in Early Spring

Bradford Pears in Early Spring

By: Jonathan Garren

When Bradford Pear blooms fall in early spring,

Snow petals twisting in the four winds’ bellows,

A chorus of songbirds minutely sing

Of once vacant nests filled with newborn sparrows.

The scent of wild onions weaves through the air,

Mixed with the redolence of yellow bells

Wreathed like a braid through your curled, chestnut hair.

And in your smile my discontent dispels

Winter’s final fatal freeze, covering

The last limbs of unwilling buds beneath

A crystalline dew of tears left smothered

By a Bradford Pear’s seasonal bequeath.

Still, every season’s change brings brighter skies;

Snow petals lost in cerulean eyes.

Ameles potamos

Ameles potamos

By: Jonathan Garren

What remains of me when the fugue breaks

And I am left alone on the sleepy banks

Of the Lethe? Will my love drown beneath the

Grasp of shades, my humanity left to drift

Like listless flotsam fated for the eternal

Wash upon Elysium tides?

Shall I drink instead from the Mnemosyne?

Shall I remember all, yet still be far

From your touch, still lost to your memory?

Shall I know you always from a distant shore?

Will I find you when I break from this

Disease that occludes my mind from the fruited

Tongues of Paradise? Will my soul return with

The golden bough and escape these bleak

Immortal chains?

Will time still sibilantly sweep the years

From our faces? Will you grow old

While I remain young? Or will I return,

Only to find you languishing drunk

On the fallacies that wash perfumed

Upon the retracted felicity of Lethean shores?

Among the Unfamiliar (For K.)

Among the Unfamiliar (For K.)

By: Jonathan Garren

Like the moon in the morning sky

We sit pinioned among the unfamiliar.

A love presupposed in wilder lands

Now lies festered and sore in tepid hands.

Still the desire lingers beneath the pulse,

Beneath the swell, beneath the neck so smooth;

The heavy warmth of lust woven in a kiss

Stemmed to blanche the chill of skin yet underhand.

With the hunger pains of passion frail,

I yearn only for love forbidden

And taste the secret sealed behind your smile.

Held in your arms against the light of a sallow sun,

Like the moon in the morning sky

We sit pinioned among the unfamiliar.

The Warmth Between Whiskey and You

The Warmth Between Whiskey and You

By: Jonathan Garren

The snow fell in a slow rage

Like Kamikaze pilots

In the dim, yellow street light.

Dark asphalt and brown fields came

To life with a pale brilliance

Like the mirrored reflection

            Of a full moon night.

As day breaks behind the blue-

Ridge backs of giants, the snow

Slowly bleeds the sky’s color

From brilliant hues to a steel

            Gray of ambivalence

The flakes swirl restless and wild

Like a flock of translucent

Birds in the wind, alighting

In fallow fields blazed brown by

Winter’s kiss; the snow collecting

On dead shoots of panicum

            Like a thousand tufts of cotton.

I stand there alone among

The electric mist of white

Noise as each flake dies violent

And cold against my wool hat,

Watching as the empty promises

Of winter fall at the fury

            Of a jealous spring.

Wrapped in the cold I have come

To know, I watch the snow fall

With a silent barrage and

Wonder if I will ever

Find the warmth I felt between

            Whiskey and you.