all through the cooler nights of April
I wrote my songs and stories

pausing only
for moments taken
to gaze into
the pallid mystery
of a poets' moon
that shone
sometimes a feeble glow
sometimes hardly present
yet at other times
a gold balloon
abreast of the horizon
at first rising

I wrote down almost half
of everything I ever knew

penned to illuminate
and clarify
to obfuscate
and to destroy
I wielded this pen of mine
to make the necessary
private admissions
reveal myself in unguarded words
and personalised glittering symbols
the shaman of Aspendale
with his onion staff
unpeeled

and I sang and sang
while the moon went past

night after night
as it cooled
I sang slower
sang quietly
kept voice within the sound
until at last
it was hardly more
than a whisper
that could have been the breeze
I felt
ruffling the coat
that I wear long
as talisman
and to kiss this
the moon of poets
goodbye
for she is gone and I
am almost
done in
by the cool of April nights

the songs
and all the stories

are etched deep into the paper
no longer secret words
nor enigmatic
merely a kind of historical accounting
for the poet moon that was

I abhor the coming
silence

Frank Faust

visit Frank's web site: Tales of Faust