To Call, a poem

To Call

To linger in forbidden gardens,
  dream beneath the black rose tree,
to play the tunes for fairy dances
  through all night’s eternity,
I seek those distant ebon towers,
  stark beside a shadowed sea
where misted perfumes of the darkness
  rise in writhing ecstasy.

To sleep in ancient haunted ruins,
  now inhabited by owls,
to hear the ravenous wolf pack passing,
  my heart thrilling to their howls,
I  wander unmapped pathways, pushing
  through the muck that clings and fouls
to join the maddened monks’ procession,
  faceless all beneath our cowls.

To call the wind, to send it raving
  through the vaults of fabled kings,
to rouse the songs of ghostly minstrels,
  cold hands on discordant strings,
I speak arcane words of enchantments,
  call upon each star that sings
across the infinite abyss —
  fearing, hoping, what fate brings.

Stephen Brooke ©2025

something like this is likely to be fiddled with for some time to come but it is probably near finished form