The King’s Exile

Issue EightIssue Eight PoetryPoetry

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By Matthew M.C. Smith

 

for Anne

 

We fly over girded earth

trailing the rise of Apollo light

thousands of feet high

 

The golden dish of sea blazes

through thin veils of cirrus

landmass emerges on planet’s curve

 

Our journeys edge zones of dark

with fear of globe’s turning silence

a choke of grief in chambered depths

 

Distances are relative

in waves of consciousness

what remains, what is lost?

 

The sky holds remnants

where dreams extend past reach

a spectre sphere of mother-moon

 

On the other side of night

my father, my bright-eyed king, awakes

walled in memories, in muscles of my blood

 

In reunion, we clasp each other

A lock of tears, always tears

 


Note: ‘The King’s Exile’ is a response to Anne Casey’s poetry that carries the theme of ‘exile’. The speaker of the poem is returning across the world to visit her ageing father. She is haunted by the death of her mother and of being far from her ‘roots’.