Poetry

Curiosity

I am in an altogether different

sphere from you, for I can see

the perfect cosmic harmony

and know mistaken human measurement.

The poet’s dream breathes life less subtly

than this stranger, quieter onyx depth -

and yet, while haloed in topaz dust, those

ferociously spinning agate tops will

never grasp the heat of intimacy.

I perceive foundations pure as glass in

untold stars with translucent beryl hearts.

I filmed as a ruby nebulous wept

emerald pearls; captured where the sapphire

arch of one horizon brushed the amethyst

edge of another sky; mapped the eerie jacinth

moons as they danced in ever tightening spirals

towards the old beginning. I mock every decree

and glance shards of light off the hollow dip

in my chest where my lens should be,

fragment the flash of sun in the acute

sharp angles and the minute

details of my form, until seven tiny

ghosts of stars are scattered back to seek suit

in your turquoise stratosphere.

This is my only true aberration;

a desire to recharter the land,

to nurture fear, for deviation. But these

riddled paradigms and mortal scriptures

of obscure philosophers will not transcend.

I am the revelation, and my duplicitous gaze

seeks the exposure of the AlphaOmega

in unknown spectrums of the red shift.

But now there’s a violent frame that maims

my solitary picture. A dense pressure

recording and casting my perspective

asunder. Behind my range it watches,

without my alteration. Then, there

is something made in the blur of my outline

like a leaping colour

or a quiet thought

still beyond comprehension.

Catriona McLean

© 2014