Aught No. 11/12 (2003) - Frazer, Three Poems

Aught, no. 11/12 (2003)

Vernon Frazer

On Different Shores

Distant azure shadows
ring their lapidary tapestries
against flagging shutters.

The flapping ostinato
wings fenestral music, a crescendo
between their sunsets.

Dawn ripples to dusk,
water lapping under a nectar breeze
past overture’s pulsing touch

The Decision

The scent of tethered tapestries
laps the cruel wind's slow crescendo.
Dawn's fenestral wings flap

the lost touch

of nectar's ostinato

toward azure harbors

no closer than memory's cold ripples
dare. The lapidary shadow there slows
the tense, lingering pulse

to a willful declaration of dusk over water,

the music's feathered breeze
fading

under sunset's distant overture

One Chained Melody

               Nocturne’s brooding lament
               clings to vibrato’s incantatory overture
               a memory

ruptured of its tapestries

               Azure   flights to foreign sunsets
               their shadows’ fenestral rapture at dawn
               ripples in the sunset

an old song gone on
and on, a nettlesome ostinato

when a mere obligato

would do.

               Nectar’s lapping wings
               crescendo their music’s shared pulse
               teasing

                           lapidary reflections

close as dusk,
no less distant than the music

cruising on the water’s

pensive breeze