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.
