Footsteps in the Bell Tower

I wrote this piece early today. I am grateful for its birth and the message it brought to me, the revelation that it was...

Footsteps in the Bell Tower

these sapphire walls have faded to grey
in the silence of forgotten words
the absurd becomes unheard as I pray
the sun shall again rise to warm this form

naked and victorious

sackcloth covering solferino tapestries
that marked ascendent victories
and serene moments of passion and peace
forgotten like an untended flower bed

the doves' release
suspended - intended
to be for but a season,
now eight
as I wait
for signs from a seamless sky,
clouded over

clouded over

mourning black bringing back
the ringing, stinging memories
that ride wide trails to the silence
of my bedchamber

cold and lifeless

a half-cut statue
of an unmet queen
sits in the courtyard
waiting for me to hoist her
to her pedestal, but in this cloister
there is no purpose
in precognizant memory.

bare feet on broken glass
where chalices fell

hell feels strangely familiar
like a spider in bride's veil,
pale to the shadows
pale to the failing light
the failing night

stirring
now
are muscles
atrophied by disuse

the sound of a blade
cutting air
in a place of disgrace
where rumour has it
the warrior has retired

uninspired and

but there are footsteps
in the bell tower.

a fortnight from the battlements
rides
the trinity of purpose.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

I think I actually understand it, amazingly enough.

The Sapphire Palace, wherein I live (my soul, my life, my poetic thronespace, if you will), has gone grey with time and sorrow in the aftermath of my divorce, and I have allowed life and light to leak from my soul. But I can feel within me the stirring of rebirth, and having set a date for the discontinuance of the books in my catalogue most closely linked to that marriage, I can now see an approaching time of rebirth.

I like the simple line that goes "uninspired and"...

It reads like an unfinished thought, like the observer is looking over the ruins of the palace, detecting only minute cues of the reawakening, then suddenly hears the running feet on the steps of the bell tower, preparing to sound the alarm, the morning.

Oh yeah...