Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

My hand meets yours
gently in the dark
like a sigh of relief, as if
our secret sorrows didn't matter now
that you have my hand.

With my other hand I hold
onto the blood-red skirt
of Divine Mother
red like
the rose of her cheeks
at dawn on mountain tops
or the fiery golden purple
veil of dusk;
the blood-red of
her evil-destroying fire.

The night shimmers
with the invisible pearly light
of a hope not far away but
just out of reach,
casting a luminous glow
on the pure white spring blossoms
growing in the dark,
and in the moment where
the only truth seems to be
to succumb and to suffer,
that hope is like a dream vision
brightening the dense darkness,
a duty that is a friend.

Golden sunset.
Church bells ringing
in the valley.
The distant song
of the first spring bird.
A cold breeze rises up
from the lake.

My essence, like a piece of
expensive fabric,
billowing in just such a wind
- the inner tempest of thoughts
and emotions.

That fabric has gold
embroidered on the edges.

I stand still in the wind
and sing. 

How Did I Know?

A cold, dark night of January
I sit by your dreaming and
you awake, you sit up and you weep.
I hold you, stunned,
What has he seen?

"I'm not ready"
Your only words.
For what?
I knew it then, but
it couldn't be. It must be something else.

How did I know?

A dark night of August
you told me
the words so small,
narrow, inconspicuous
but within them a vast, destroying reality.
You held me
in your pain,

John Everett Millais

in my stunned speechlessness,
feeling its impact inside me
everything shattering,
imploding
silently,
desperately

How did I know?

Hand in hand we approach
the imposing building
to plead for mercy, for time.

Around us
the velvety spring green
gives the air a golden hue
a fresh healing love surround us
but do I dare allow its comfort
to reach the immovable winter within?

What was the verdict?
What was the answer?