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ECHOES FROM THE CANYON

REFLECTIONS FROM THE DARK

By TY CRUZ a.k.a. SOMBRAE

 

PART 1

ECHOES FROM THE CANYON

 

 

 

Chance Encounter

 Our eyes met, and in that glance all

time was held and all space.

A universe spun within the depth

of your soul, contained

And bounded by the soft

planes of your face,

Alive with all the tears, dreams

and hopes by love attained.

I, weary traveler of this world

and ready to forsake

My journey to rest awhile or

forever within your eyes,

Let loose all the chains of Earth,

and was in its wake

Drawn into your world to be

held by the binding ties

Of recognition. Between one heart's beat

and another grow

Inseparably together, then envious Time resumes;

and you turn…and go.

 

 

 

Mortal child

 

Sweet mortal child of flesh and bone

Lost and lonely; all alone

 

All hopes live and all hopes die

On the fragile wings of dragonflies

 

Dreams of life and dreams alone

Are the tattered remnants of your soul

 

The fevered outcry of your heart

Only to end as you did start:

Alone.

 

 

The Desert

Give me the desert

The heat scented wind

The drifted and flowing sands

Like so many golden strands

Of hair

 

The solitude of

Barren earth and stone

The wild, free loneliness of night

Awaiting the white-hot sun's flight

To come.

 

 

 

Perspectives

 

The canyon speaks to me of you:

I remember lying with my head

Down on the mattress

Looking upwards over your body,

Your breasts, gently lit by a

Street lamp against the dim night,

Like a hill rising above me.

And here, in the canyon, a silhouette

Captures my sight,

Repeats a familiar perspective;

Your breast echoed in a hill.

And I long to close my lips

Around the nipple of this

Gigantic breast

And taste again your salt

As my tongue plays music

On your body.

I tear my eyes away from visions

And stand solitary.

Canyon walls of rock and soil

Bind me to reality.

The wind moans.

I am silent in my missing you

And I am alone.

 

 

 

From Hell's Canyon

 

There are spirits here;

They whisper among the cliffs

And bare rocks that crack

With the day's heat

And shake with the night's thunder.

They speak of aloneness

And chant of Mysteries:

 

The gentle rise of a hill

Like a woman's breast,

The sweep of a ridge against the

Sky; curved

Like her back or bared shoulder,

Or her hair

Wind-swept across her cheek.

 

There are spirits here;

They sing:

Voices rising from the river's rushing

Echoed among rock walls;

Home of eagles.

And if I listen quietly enough

Perhaps I will come

To understand them.

 

 

 

Echoes From The Canyon

 

My lover is the canyon

And she is free---

Intense, burning, wild:

Storm clouds stream across the sky;

Her hair wind-whipped, black and gray.

Lightening: the flash of her sword strokes,

Her laughter thunder in my ears

As we dance,

My sword arcing, flashing in answer.

Laughing, screaming as I whirl and spar,

Giving voice to the wild freedom of

Eagles within my soul.

Yes, she is wild, her passion

And mine join

And are burned away in this

Mad dance

Leaving me spent.

----------------

 

Down-river:

Loving a woman I have only just met:

Her passions rock me,

And as our eyes lock

I see within her blue the gray of storm clouds,

The flash of lightening.

In the deep moans she utters

As I rouse her

I hear a distant thunder.

She writhes and tosses her hair;

Dark as cloud

Wind blown by the storm

We have created within this room,

And I find as the thunder rolls over me,

Consumes me,

That my lover is echoed here

Within this woman.

 

****

 

My lover is patient,

Strong as her

Rock cliffs and crags,

Soft as her sandy, grass clothed hillsides.

Her heat surrounds me, enfolds me,

Passion, burning low:

Banked fires.

Sheen of glassy rock echoed in the

Sheen of sweat on my skin,

Sun-brightness that wounds my eyes

And wounds my heart with her

Beauty.

Eagles, in lazy spirals, cry joyous

Freedom as they ride her thermals.

Her heat burns me brown, sears me

With passions intense beyond bearing.

I seek her cool shadows and find

A spring of crystal waters.

I lower my face to her gift

And drink of her;

Cool and soothing,

Bringing ease to my burning.

----------------

 

Down-river:

And here in another woman's

Eyes, brown this time,

And shadowed,

I see sunlight on rock faces,

Golden highlights;

The heat of rock reflected sun;

The burning.

And she, too, has a spring of sweet waters.

I lower my head and taste deeply,

Quenching my thirst.

She cries out and I hear

The call of eagles.

I am lifted and ride her thermals

On the outspread wings of passion.

Below me, I again see reflected

The face of my lover.

 

****

 

She is clever, she who is my lover,

And likes to mock me;

Throwing my words back to me

When I call out from her high

Hard rock cliffs.

I dance on her cliff edges and

The wind, her fingers,

Slide over my body;

A caress.

I dance upon the cliff's very edge

Daring a fall,

Part of me wanting it; to throw

Myself into the rock hard

Arms of my lover:

A final surrender.

She calls; her voice moaning through

The draws.

I throw back my head and give voice

To the loneliness,

And yearning,

That move through my soul

Like a great river.

And in my voice I hear the cry

Of coyotes,

A song of despair,

And my lover, as always,

Echoes back my call;

Mocking my pain, my passions.

I press my cheek to sun-hot stone;

Hard and uncaring

And know that I am dying here

Or going mad.

 

----------------

 

Down-river:

Staring into the eyes of a woman

As she sits across the table,

Our untouched dinners between us.

There is sadness in her eyes,

Gray and gentle.

As her glance slides over me

I feel wind, warm and caressing,

Against my skin.

She speaks her own words,

Not a mocking echo of mine;

Words of accusation and sorrow:

Painting a picture of rock hard cliffs,

Searing heat,

The burning.

I see in my mind's-eye the face of my lover,

The canyon,

Her uncaring stone,

Deep waters, incredible storms.

I search this woman's eyes as

She continues speaking

Of me.

Pain howls anguish within my heart;

The cry of coyotes

On windswept and darkened crags:

I do not fall,

I do not surrender.

I am the echo of my lover;

And as I walk away I hear

This gray-eyed woman's words

Echoing off my stone---

 

 

 

Realities

 

I stand on high crags

And lean into the wind,

Longing to spread wings

And leap outward

To soar on warm air

Leaving everything behind;

The ultimate of freedoms.

But I know I am hopelessly chained

To the earth.

Weighted by my yearnings,

Held down by loneliness

And longing,

Grounded by my hope

Of love.

I press my cheek to warm rock,

Rough, unfeeling,

Unresponsive.

I crave a softness

To touch, to hold and be held

By arms of flesh and blood and bone

Alive with human passions.

I stare outward, my back against stone;

The canyon's upthrust bones,

The canyon, whom in a moment

Of fancy I have named

As my lover,

And I hate her

In the deep knowledge

That she is not real

And I am

All alone.

 

 

 

A Truth

 

I had believed

When first I came here,

That the canyon held secrets

And I would learn to hear her.

That the rocks and heated sands,

The wind and the river

Would whisper wisdom to me.

And I have learned a mystery:

That the canyon;

Rock walls and water,

Echo and reflect

My inner-most heart

And being,

And all I had sought

To learn

Was within me always.

But foolish, in the way of humans,

I first had to look outward

In order to finally see

Within.

 

 

 

PART TWO

REFLECTIONS FROM THE DARK

 

 

 

My Lady Dreams

 

The moon it has risen

Over the few passers-by.

Walk soft, night strangers,

As my lady dreams.

 

I sit in the darkness

Touched by night sounds;

Echoes of earlier touching,

And my lady now dreams

.

My cigarette smoke rises

Towards the full moon;

Silver on darkness

As my lady dreams.

 

 

 

Woman

 

Woman, I held you

For a span

A dream free of time

Alone together

I understood you there

Within ourselves.

 

 

 

I Love

 

Lost in realms of sabled night

I walked alone,

Searching for what the heart had

Hidden from the soul.

 

Then the touch, the keen piercing

Of your glance,

Like the swift and fatal blow

Of knightly lance,

 

Laying open breast and bone to the

Dark heart's blood;

Leaving the undefended soul to

Moan, "I love".

 

The leap and lift of ecstasy when

Eye holds eye;

The spiral flight of eagles

Held on high.

 

As one we reach to hold again

The other's hand,

The magnet of flesh to flesh is drawn

Until we stand

 

Cheek on cheek pressed to hide

The soft blush.

And the soul within, exalted,

Cries, " I love".

 

In one night of frost's killing cold

You are gone.

Left in winter's climes of leaden gray

Again I am alone.

 

My thoughts; the sudden flight of birds

Across the snow

And ice bound sky, arc, cutting

To the soul.

 

The sharp and brittle sound of broken

Heart, scattered blood,

Echoes the numbed and frozen soul's

Sigh, "I loved".

 

 

Lover

 

She lies in softness

Warm as night

Her scent enthralls me

Engulfs me

Her hair reflecting starlight

She gasps and writhes

Eyes wide, silvered by the moon

As I trail kisses down her body

And take the taste of her

On my tongue.

 

 

Night

 

As she leans over me

Darkness falls across my eyes

Like the warm and sweet-scented

Hair of a lover.

In tender and loving arms

She takes me to her embrace

Soothing the wounds left by

Keen-edged day.

 

 

 

A Walker At Night

 

Come, darkness whose name is Night,

The sun is gone, ceased its gaudy flight

Across the sky.

 

As the moon lifts wingless overhead

Lovers make mock-struggle in their beds

And nighthawks cry.

 

Under the long, slow silence of the stars

The soundless fall of a moonbeam jars

The soul with unheard song.

 

Limned by starlight the quivering leaves

Whisper secrets from the shadowed trees

That the breezes dance among.

 

Like the ancient tug of moon on flood

I feel your power, in bone and blood,

Rising as the tide.

 

Thus beguiled, unresisting, by your call

I leave behind imprisoning walls

To journey at your side.

 

 

Reflections From The Dark

 

Alone in the dark with the wild scent of night

Wrapped about my heart

And the far off violence of innumerable suns by

Distance reduced to a star.

The cold, white light cast down by the heavens

Denies the original rage of burning,

As in the dark mirror of the sky

I see the images merging

Of the fury and ancient pain

Within a heart too much alone.

Reflections seen in the living night

Of my human soul.

 

 

Desolation

 

From the dark heart's loneliness

My love is come.

Being not born of Purity's light,

Nor of the exquisite flight

On fiery wings of the Poet's song

That lovers lament unto self done

Death, when Icarus-like it falls

Burning from the height.

My passion from too much aloneness

Is more dearly won.

Creeping towards the dim seen light,

Only to sink beneath viscous waves of night,

Unheeding of the last trumpet calls

To resurrection; by Love itself undone.

 

 

 

Enduring

 

I have watched the motion of stars

As night wheels down, changing to the bright

Arc of sun crossing the sky

Soon to settle again, breaking free the night.

 

I have watched the seasons dance

Their colors past my jaded eye

To give birth to years that

On the winged decades fly.

 

Weight-weary my soul lies within

The walls of memory; immured,

Still I watch the falling years

Mount o'er my head, yet I endure.

 

By Ty Cruz a.k.a. Sombrae

Sombrae@yahoo.com

1999 

 

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