Brother moons chalky,
saturnine crescent
could barely penetrate
the giant’s
match-stick forest:
its burnished copper foliage
would remain latent,
for now.

This night antagonized
                          our souls,
darker when I stared into its
vacuous depths
than when glanced
from my minds periphery.
Pervasive,
it exploited the valleys repose.
Crystal.
Morning’s volition was heralded
with a transient
thaw.

December’s waking drafts
spoke ardently
of a daughter lost:
for centuries
a solitary bloom,
sustained by unseen conduits,
grew
upon the surface
of a fallow field.

Now it lay,
                                       defiled by my hand.

Her blood-stained spray seeped
into the earths russet tunic.
Dawn’s sentries:
two soot black crows,
stalked a field’s beaded
hawthorn seam as a
                                                church knells cadence
punctuated
the airs discourse from its holy precipice;
death, death, death
sonorous
on my ear.





©*Thomas Gabriel

A lofty elevation,
A plumose cowl,
An irrefutable will.
Discretion: his calling card,
A birch-white arrow through
Viscous mauve shadows.
The strigine thief
Who appropriates your form
From the ground upward.
Predacious eyes perceive flesh and bone,
Discarded like chaff
Upon autumns threshing floor.
His talons disclosed,
Your legs shrouded
By his imperious wing.
Vaporous, you stand,
Your torso drawn ambiguous,
Upon the horizons ochre fabric.
Silken hair falls
Obliquely around your shoulders
Coalescing with the gathering mist.
Like the astringent hues in your puerile eyes,
I will fade from this night.
The evidence etched, evermore
Inside two darkling vessels.

I witnessed it all.




©*Thomas Gabriel

A capricious young mind
alive with reveries of vistas and granite hues,
enthralling nocturnes
and his touch in the night air.

Disparate and removed
you contemplated the stars,
a life lived with arms outstretched
beckoning the notional.

Beneath the ceaseless sky
you yearned for his warmth,
to feel your ashen flesh adhere to his every fissure
raising your arms to his celestial vantage
you beckoned, once more.

From the dimming light,
above the distant horizon he rose -
like the smoke of an ardent fire that resided within,
ascending through your being,
coming to rest upon your weary head,
he suffused each lissom filament with a fragrance,
eternal.





©*Thomas Gabriel