SARA L. RUSSELL

The Broken Scrying Glass
Sara L. Russell 00:28 04/07/2008

I
 
Half-close my eyes, perhaps
I'll dream it never happened;
allow it to blur or fade away
nothing is certain anyway
Let recollections fold into themselves
in cold suspension,
between the ceiling and the floor
enter the entities the dreamer can't avoid.
 
Black splinters rain down shards
of pain in jagged patterns;
turning the spectrum into grey
stirring the id to go astray
wakening demons of the nether realms
and dark dimensions.
Nothing is certain any more;
save for the spectre of a gaping, empty void.
 

II
 
In days before the sundering of dreams
Such power was encompassed by these hands
Laughter of water sounded through the streams
Forces of nature answered my commands.
 
In days before order was stripped away
Lightning could issue from these fingertips
Turning the blackest night to brightest day
Burning the tallest tree to smoking strips.
 
Bright stars beheld within the oval ring
Like tiny faces in a deep black pool
Became my oracles for everything
Each constellation held an ancient rule.
 
Now, in the aching wondering of why,
A million pieces craze my tortured sky.
 

III
 
So far away, so long ago foregone,
Such restless days, while otherwise content.
Nothing was ever finite, time went on;
Infinities of summers came and went.
 
A million pieces of eternity
Go spinning to the outer stratasphere,
One wormhole into bleak catastrophe -
I'm watching my reflection disappear.
 
I asked the night "Where did the magic go?"
But nothing more than silence was returned.
With only three dimensions, who would know
Whether the other five slumbered or burned?
 
For time will swallow all the universe
And change will ever be the future's curse.
 

IV
 
What was the colour of
the last of all the missing pieces?
The one that fell between the space
between some present and past place
out of a glass where I had darkly gazed
for divination?
I thought I held it in my hand
but it eluded me, like some forgotten dream.
 
Where is the portal of
the world where my forsaken peace is?
Like someone's name I cannot place
or like a half-remembered face,
where is the key that once my fingers traced
in adulation?
Now it recedes away like sand,
like my mortality, into a black hole's seam.

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NOTES:

This poem is about disillusionment; also fear of change, the passing of time and of growing old. The magical times mentioned in the poem are a symbol of my student days, when I really believed that I would do something amazing with my life.

The illustration was a photo I took of myself with my phone, made monochrome, mirrored and manipulated in PaintShop Pro. It represents the broken scrying glass. A scrying glass is a tool used by pagans and prophets to foresee the future. While some use a crystal ball, this is a mirror; often painted black - which may have inspired the biblical phrase "through a glass darkly".