Muzzle

Muzzle

On paper, the words flow:
Streaming all the colors of me
Full-spectrum as they go
Eddying onward, thrashing into foam
As they collide with something
Beneath the surface - something below,
Where the deep black currents roam
Unstayed by any other thing.

The sunlight's sparkle and gleam
Off rainbow shards of froth
Dazzle-dancing on the stream,
Distracts me from the dark below
With bright-winged flittings to and fro.
I delight in teeming surfaces of things,
And love the darting, sweeping shallows.

In my mind, the images flood:
Lives and times all sinking down
Monochrome as the mud
Slumbering, the black silt compressed
To stone by water and time
While seasons pass above; flowers bud
To bloom and stand undressed
And freeze beneath thick winter rime.

Something, sure, will stir
This darkness, then roil the quiet
Muffled under snow-white fur
Mantling layers of ice above, to show
Some spark of light to glimmer and grow
With the passing of seasons and dance of time
To melt the sluggish quiet here below.

Quick with the words and let me fly, then: I am young,
And nothing hinders nor stays me
As my bright words sail forth on the page --
Till a stranger’s question comes and my mulish tongue
Locks up my lips and betrays me,
And my slumber is broken by rage.

============================
c. 2000 by Todd Eliot