Solace or, Echoes Of Light Above The Sirenum Scopuli                                                                          Cole McKeith

 ———

You heard broken violin, once, at night.

In an ancient Garden, fractured strings wove along the evening light:

lonely, fragmented notes of a stranger moving through an uncertain song

that dissolved into a wild expanse that stretched centuries, forgotten to all

but they and you. The trees shrouded them from an ancient home

like yours, no farther than you could throw a stone.

You don’t know why that’s beautiful.

In the city, music frays as its fragile lines pull taut

or drifts away as its gentle frames are caught

by the wind. Notes fade into the smoke and the din

and channel into a long and steady drone.

But in the wild, music should strike your sense and your mind

with the ghostly visage of a song that plays far behind

your own. The stranger, too, was struck by their own notes.

Old, forgotten walls were pierced by the growth of the trees

and the remnants of stone roads cracked from below by the growth of the weeds.

Every note of the stranger’s scattered song seemed random

until struck, when you knew it could not have been played another way.

Your strange acquaintance played long after the Sun set behind the hills,

alongside the echoed calls of a farther songbird’s trill

that lured you to your slumber.

In the morning, you woke to find your companion sleeping past the dawn

and doubted you could reawaken some lonesome stranger’s song.

The hour was lost, and the words would evade you

to describe the sound of Siren-song gliding along the dusk.

You questioned if your friend before had known those somber tones

or if they would reassure you that the stranger's path was lone.

But they knew, in your face, that you’d hear that song again someday.

Perhaps in the kind of den your father might have laid,

where he would stay where you should stray.

A worn spirit like his may sit among crowds on a darkling eve,

striking at old, ivory keys with the faraway hope of cutting through the noise.

Such sound choked your father like vaporous binds

before your mother came along

to mend your father’s broken mind.

Perhaps in a place your mother might have strayed,

where she would run where you should stay.

A disparate spirit like hers could lay alone on a distant shore

playing at worn, fraying chords to rage against the silence.

Such ghosts came to your mother when her song went dark

before your father came along

to cool your mother’s violent heart.

Perhaps in a place that’s never seen your parent’s painful brands,

a distant place where faults should fall to lay along its sands.

The clear, desert sky will hover quietly above a serene market

where people exchange ancient secrets in whispered voices.

It will be your companion to mark the reappearance of the song.

You’ll turn to look, but turn too fast, and find the stranger gone,

lost in the peculiar face of someone you’ve never seen.

Your companion will know your fallen face from a moment they’ve misplaced

and stand helpless as they watch your solemn eyes flicker with the somber grace

of loss. But then they’ll take you by the hand and learn to match your stride,

daring you to meet the pace of a now distant, almost indiscernible moment

when someone struck you with an ancient blaze

that broke the world to fractal haze.

 

You heard broken violin, once, at night.

And it made you think of stars.

Of broken, fated, gyred flights,

which intersect in multitudes,

but only rarely join their light.