Euphony from Hell

(Elegy for my Great-Aunt Violet)

Dreams of fantastic horses
galloping out of the sea,
the sea itself a dream.

Dreams of green on green,
an age of slothfulness
where one-celled animals
blossom, once more,
into limbs, brains, pounding hooves,
out of the terrible innocence
of the waves.

(pause)

Venice on the crest
of Hell's typhoon,
Tsunami of my dreams
when all at once,
I'm awaken again at 3:15am
in a tidal wave of love
and sleeplessness, anxiety
and dread
(dread, there's a word she hated)

Up from the dream
up on the shining white
ledge of "dread"
I dredge the deep
for proof that we
do not die,
for proof that love is
a seawall against despair,
finding only one-celled dreams
dividing as in the primal light.

(pause)

Dear Aunt Violet,
you who painted the sea
so obsessively,
you who painted the horses
galloping out of the sea
(and into my head)

Go now,
ride on the bareback
of the unsaddled,
unsaddleable horses who
would take you
straight to hell.

Gallop on the back
of all my nightmares,
dance in the foam
in a riot of hooves
& let the devil paint you
with his sea green brush,
let him take you
into the waves at last
(and out of my head)
until you fall,
chiming forever,
through the seaweed covered halls
of the deep.

Down through the hulls
of gelatinous fish,
down through the foamless
foam which coats your
blanched bones,
down through the undersea
green which changes your flesh
into virginal pigment
grinding your eyes down
to the essential cobalt blue.

Let the bones of my poems
support what is left of you-
ashes & nightmares,
canvasses half-finished
& fading sketches.

Dear Aunt Violet
as you die,
a poem forms on the
end of my quill,
as foams forms
on the oceans
morning mouth,
& I sing honor of the sea
& you,

the seas who defies all
paintings & poems
& you who defy the sea.

~SAS