An Ode Upon Imagination

I went to a writing conference last weekend (not the one that just passed but before that). The conference was phenomenal, I learned a lot a lot a lot, networked a bit, and won a contest-- with this poem! Enjoy.

An Ode upon Imagination

By Caitlin Smith

{Written upon the midnight hour

As I lay me down to rest in my bower.

Yawning, I dimmed the lights

Then words assailed me in the night!

I leapt from my bed and grabbed a pen,

Turned up the oil, then I began

On a journey of syllables, this I was bound

And here is the song I found.}

I am lost

                                           -- In a crush

                                           -- In a thought

                                           -- In a dream

I am caught

In the wonder

Of the Muses’ silken stream.

Swept—by the grandeur.

Held—by a spark.

Caught—dinna plan to

Yet in Imagining I am lost

Where glorious tale to morals are told,

  Where spark of genius begins,

  Where time—finally—has no bound,

  Where love doth ne’er end.

  

  Oh, Imagination, take me away

  To thy middling world.

  There twilight is eminent,

  Evening always falls.

  Existing upon the place where

  The moons shadow strikes the sun.

  

  There everything is great

  Everything is pure

  Every story matters

  Catch me in thy wings, oh Muse

  Bear me swiftly thither.

  Alas, Ambrosia I want no more.

  For without thy dream-wine I wither.

  

  But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

  A Tyger burning bright

  In the forest of the night

  As fairies dance delight.

Yes, a fairy dances on the breeze;

She sings a song of melodies

And whispers in the wind.

  

  History told a thousand ways

  All dreamed to save a queen.

  Shahrazad and I,

  Sisters we two do be.

  Sweet Eleanor de Aquitaine,

  Morgan le Fay, and Nimue of the deep

  Belle and Beauty, a fairytale

  Princess may I be.

  

  Here we may chat, and listen, and dream

  A while in my fancied bower.

  A life more real, an interview more true

  Held at tea, by the moon’s hour.

  

  I find—Beauty and her Beast.

  I fly—East, forever East.

  I cry—please do not leave.

  I try to remember a dream.

  

  A tale as old as the clover’s leaf

  As new as Father Time;

  Cronus yawning, stretching, sleeping

  Giving me his rhyme.

  

  Here I am a secret sorceress,

  Here my paramours dwell,

  Here I am maid or temptress,

  A fay, an author, an El-

   lesian princess, a painter,

  A singer, a dreamer, here I be.

  “No” not heard for this is

  The very realms of possibility.

  

  Petal lights, I dance the dawn that dare would dash my dream.

  Here light come from the stars

  From hope

  From in-between.

  

  The cracks of life have caught much

  And here, this domain, I find

  All that’s been lost to me

  Hindered only by my

  

  Imagination.

  A dream.

  A different dream.

  Each night, no two the same

  Each day a journey, a life, a sleep

  All true, all pure, all me

  

  A fate, a fancy, a fantasy

  My life in every hue.

  Imagined, dreamed, held, and safe

  In the hands of you.

  

  So now I lay me down to sleep

  Imagination! Take wing!

  For here the moon rules,

  The sun is gone,

  I live just to dream.