5 poems of Magical Love.byIan R. Thorpe, Lancashire, UK

Some rights reserved. These previously published titles may be distributed with attribution. Publication history below.

Maid of Paradise

We shall meet in cool and torchlit courtyards,the silent precincts of night's sweet embraceand bathe there in gentle fountains where clearsparkling waters cleanse past's tainted trace.A couch waits, draped with fine silks and linens,dates and almonds rest upon a silver tray.Before us a feast of new beginnings,each choice placed like a jewel in the display.

Scents of jasmine and musk intoxicate us,the stars anoint the bed where we will lie.Your eyes are like the gates of seven heavens,four basilisks stand ready to defymortality - and all time's hungry hunterswho would pursue us to this den of peace;bring their pious rules here to confront usand spoil the pleasure we have in our feast.

Your body like a slice of moonlightfalls softly on this torn and battered frame,opens to me, lets our beings uniteto best the gods at fate, their chosen game.The gentle night will hide and protect youbut when cruel dawn calls, bidding you departI will beg Cronos halt the sun and let youforever be the houri of my heart.

NOTE: The Houri of Arabic and Indian mythology are the Maids of Paradise, virgins who will be wives to the faithful dead in the afterlife. Although they are usually packaged in sets of between four and seventy - two my chosen one is quite a lively girl she tells me - and I am not as energetic as I used to be.

Arianrhod (of Silver Dawn*)

In moon's pale glow I watch you sleeping,beauty kissed as gentle rays highlight

soft lips that promise absolutionputting all my doubts and fears to flight.

Though madness prospers all around uswithin the peaceful bubble we float free,

protected by your golden nimbusthat shields from perils none foresee.

And when I touch your naked body,hold you close against the pre - dawn chill

you stir, and shifting closer whisperwords to bring ending to my vigil.

Arianrhod sets ablaze the far horizonthen spreads bright skirts over night’s dark field,

begins her journey westward to liaisonwhere earth meets sky and even gods must yield.

Wake my love, share with me this enchantment,shed your light upon the nascent morn

and in this wasteland steal for us a fragmentfrom Arianrhod of the Silver Dawn

*Arianrhod of Silver Dawn is one of the Celtic Goddesses of sunrise, though as her name is said to mean "silver circle" this suggests lunar associations as well. I choose to think of her as especially potent on mornings when sunrise tints the horizon before the moon has set.

Cages

We lived in cages, you and I,

Seeing each other as shadows

in a place with no light.

We stood reaching out,

our fingers almost meeting,

faces pressed to cold iron,

but people who held keys told us

contact was against the rules.

The others there all lived in cages

and did not complain.

When everyone is imprisoned

imprisonment is freedom of a kind

for those who can surrender.

Each day we reached,

almost touched. Almost....

Did our fingers ever meet,

did the glow we made light

our faces or was it just a trick

of my imagination that

burned your image on my mind.

I could not if I tried

forget the hunger in your eyes.

My flesh still imagines

the passion of your touch.

Perhaps my sterile love stays

with you now. But I am gone,

and you live in a different cage.

A lot of people think they know who inspired this. They are only partly right, there have been several incarnations of the poem over the years, each time I fell mutually and hopelessly in love with somebody but we were prevented by various circumstances from pursuing the attraction to its logical conclusion. I'm not being mean in hoping everybody has had an experience something like this (or these perhaps?) Its frustrating at the time but the memories are delicious.

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CHIMERA.

You take my hand and kiss my lipsthen like a starburst you are gone;flown on psyche's coloured wings

to outshine the dazzling sun.And when I find you once again

where, as night's dark mares hold wake,you rest; lonely as the moonlight

reflected on a still, deep lake.

And sometimes like a timid deerand sometimes like a butterfly

you change, fearing to know yourselfwhile I must love you constantly.

Though you may come as summer's nymph,clothed in colours of Lammas - day

or as a sullen silent shadecloaked and cowled in sorrow's grey.

In memory's cavernous fearswhere monsters haunt your sleepless head

whispering with voices from the past,wearing dead faces that you dread

to drive you a million milesfrom the sanctuary of my light,love's timeless, purifying flame

will always guard you through the night.

NOTESChimera: A shape - shifter, a fabulous creature, an impossible fancy

Lammas day: festival formerly held in England on Aug. 1, when bread baked from the first crop of wheat was consecrated at Mass.

Mare: though we usually think of nightmares as simply bad dreams, in old English mythology a mare was any kind of monster thus night's dark mares here are the

monsters that prowl the dark world when we cannot sleep.

ian thorpe at gather.com

For An American Girl

It is often said that if you remember the sixties you weren't there. There are times I have forgotten, times I'd rather forget and some times the memories of which will live on long after my body gives out.

I still love you on summer mornings

remembering the way you would stand

by the window, greeting the Appalachian light

Delirious dust-motes danced in your aura,

Cool green sunlight filtered by tall trees

dappled your body as we swam in the pond

while voyeuristic squirrels watched

and preoccupied birds ignored

our growing love. We smelled of grass

And earth, made friends with wise old trees

Offered up our love to the sky and

Rejoiced too short a time in freedom

Before the pious world recalled our names

And annulled our irreligious marriage.

Publication History:

Maid of Paradise:

Love’s Many Ways anothology; Forward Press, UK 2005

Poetry Life and Times (UK, 2004)

Arianrhod

Poetry Now Magazine (UK, 2006)

Poetry Life and Times (UK, 2004)

Cages

Write On (Commonword Writers’ Workshop 1981)

Pennine Ink (UK, 1984)

Poetry Life and Times ( UK, 2001)

Millenium Dawn Anthology, Kedco Studios, Las Vegas, 2001

Chimera

Greenteeth Multi Media 2006

For an American Girl

Millenium Dawn anotholgy, Kedco Studios, 2001

Poetry Now magazine (UK, 2005)

A Pale Horse

In a dream I saw a rider on a pale horsebut still felt no remorse for the things I’ve done,

and the moonlight shone upon the graveyard

picking out black letters on a pale stone.

The sky grew lighter as the dawn drew near,revealing the name of one I once held dear

who shared my pillow for a joyful year.Slender as a willow, she had blue-black hair,

slender as a willow and as pale as deathand tender as a blossom on a green stem.

Her hips clung like ivy and her sweet breathtasted of berries drenched in cool cream.

I knew my cold heart froze the spark within her,the vital spark that wills life to persist.

My cold indifference tore the life within heras sure as if my hand had held a cruel knife.

Indifference to a love that’s truly given is cold as any blade, as cruel as any blow.I found her cold and rigid in the morning,hanging from a willow in the cold rain.

In my dream her lifeless eyes accuse me.Beside her is a rider on a Pale Horse.I want to cry and beg for absolution,

Retribution would grant a kind of justice

All my life those lifeless eyes will haunt me.Each man kills the one he loves the poet said;

she filled my world though she came from another,I tried to love her but she was a mystery.

Each day I try but can feel no remorse,beside me steps a rider on a pale horse,

only through my death my love may live again. I only see reality within a dream.

Ian Thorpe at Authorsden