Marye Trim: ‘An Obit’ and ‘Sky Watch’

An Obit

Plenitude came knocking at my door,
stylish in the fashion of Dior.
Modestly her name she told.

Selfishness then rattled at my gate,
apologising that he came a little late,
wanting to remind me to be bold.

Homelessness approached me in the street,
begging for a coin for food to eat.
To change my shameful ways, I then resolved

to wash away the tempting Midas flame
of avarice, by now my middle name.
With aid and certain struggle it dissolved.

Deep the water, wide the healing stream.
River Pactolus is real and not a dream,
where cool cascades distil the dust of gold.

Clean, I slept an earthly winter’s night,
but I awoke to brighter, heavenly light,
and so my tale of mortal life is told.

Marye Trim

Sky Watch

The overture began with nothingness,
a stygian black hole, celestial silence,
. a burning heat of cosmic singularity.
Then cannon-like, resembling booming drums
and crackling castanets in chorus, flaming light
beamed out a firmament, a vault of heaven
in allegro mood. A moment for caesural pause,
before primeval symphony began to play
the music of the spheres in full performance.
.
Aeons have passed since that amazing dawn,
yet still pervasive and as real as love or pain,
harmony and disharmony play on, in billions
of gliding galaxies and strumming stars. Diminuendo
and different in every heart: a skipping scherzo,
rapping rhyme or psalm of consolation, they inspire.
There is vibrato through the air, in gumtree grove,
on desert sand or city street, and in the early evening
the Southern Crux appears in dancing spirit light.

Such soaring melodies! Aurora Australis plays in streaming
bars of blue and gold; the Milky Way with pinwheel pattern,
gleams as if transmitted by a team of tinkling tambourines;
arias of joy or grief, increasing in crescendo, exult
the earthly humdrum beat that has its own black hole.
Somewhere in the dark, a heart is seeking harmony.
Sky watch symphony has many movements, change of pace,
of mood and message that mere mortals try to understand.
Perhaps it is alike to life, with blazing dawn and starry dusk.

Marye Trim