Lynn Tait is an award-winning poet/photographer residing in Sarnia, Ontario Canada. Her poems have appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, Windsor Review, Vallum, FreeFall, Literary Review of Canada and over 100 North American anthologies. She is a member of The Ontario Poetry Society and the League of Canadian Poets.
The Blue Belief of Dreams Italics from: Undressing the Angels - John B. Lee Poems. They come as dreams now – fresh until that ill-fated turn in bed, any sudden movement – images scatter, threads fray, disintegrate. If only one could burn those words somewhere in the mind’s steady tangle for future use, when time slows, or seems to, like an epiphany relived: and then, the ring of light when pen becomes sword, every legend alive, a nebula born from that very burning, those memories, the ones you’ve set aside for this very moment, angel-kissed, ready to announce with trumpets blaring, singing of the luminous and radiant affair and all the angels join in to do their part – You can see each line’s purpose, hear each phrasing’s nuance, feel the rhythm – the place where everything flows in your direction like water vowels of a brilliant well, and it’s just you and them and the burning wish: The well never running dry, the fall of consonants always soft on your brow. Diphthongs – their cadence dipping and soaring, swooping and nesting like songbirds well-fed, safe like a mother’s lullaby; or a chorus of Christmas angels, singing of that holy night, beginning with the iridescent whispering of O. Even those mad with desire, so mad the song comes from a place outside any realm, blasting stars, lighting up worlds best left in darkness, or opening up un-used hearts to the possibility of light, the mind may settle, let angels come briefly to the fevered breath. Instead they come like dreams in smoky shapes of scintillating dust. But if you lie still, they may take shape again a road retaken allowing you to remember what holds the summer moon; and if possible the verse starts back beginning like Michael rowing, or Gregorian chanting, or one potato, two potato, eeny meeny miny moe – carrying with it a feeling, a sense of wonder, a touching, like rosaries fingered in earnest, and every letter, word and line holds this: still arriving like dreams but at a moment you choose,already full circled in reflecting mist. © Lynn Tait, 2020
