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Beltane Dream

Did I pass that way in dreams or waking?
For truthfully, it seems to me a dream:
Fields of yellow through the green hills breaking,
The Hawthorn blowing incandescent steam
Through the greenwood, ghostly in the hedges.
Across the glassy river running green,
Willows reach from muddy oozing edges
To wash their feathered toes and fingers clean.
Bluebells in the crook of root-wood tangles
Beneath the shade of mighty oak and thorn.
Endless were the colors, forms and angles
In which that May-time did the earth adorn.
Sleep will often leave one in confusion,
And sleep by full-moon often will deceive
Memory and sight in some illusion,
And far embellished visionings conceive.
If in truth the midnight does beguile me,
No wine nor liquor could outmatch its kind.
Morning’s light will come and reconcile me
And leave me only shadows in my mind.
May it be no product of my dreaming
But memory of some swift-passing day,
Brought to mind by moonlight on me beaming,
Awakening some long-forgotten May.

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Patricia Rogers Crozier has been published in The Washington Post. She holds a B.S. in Physics from Mississippi College. She resides in Gulf Breeze, Florida, where she works at the bakery in Publix.

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7 Responses

  1. Isabella

    I absolutely love your beautiful poem! Beltane is my favourite time of year. I also liked the alternating lines of trochaic and iambic meter. A truly wonderful poem

    Reply
  2. Michael Pietrack

    The beautiful imagery, especially at the beginning of the poem, captured me.

    Reply
  3. LTC Roy E. Peterson

    Smooth beautiful poem that must have been distilled from your Southern roots bringing to life with color the flowers, trees, hedges, and hills.

    Reply
  5. Paul Freeman

    Your description of Beltane reminded me of the opening of the General Prologue to Canterbury Tales.

    Evocative and vivid. Thanks for the read, Patricia.

    Reply
  6. Shamik Banerjee

    You have painted a beautiful setting here with a harmonious combination of iambs and trochees. The upper part of your poem is replete with many breathtaking images: willows cleaning their fingers and toes, a river running green, bluebells standing adjacent to wood root, etc. I also like how you’ve claimed moonlight to be a greater intoxicant than any wine or liquor. This piece is indeed like a dream. Thanks for sharing it, Patricia.

    Reply
  7. Pamela Ruggiero

    This reminds me of a poem I read about mid July. It was a summer poem and yours is a spring poem.

    I like the ABAB rhyming scheme. I know that is more difficult to do than AABB. I have had some people actually tell me that they prefer the ladder but it’s more difficult to do what you do because you have to think ahead as to what you’re third and fourth lines are going to be in that quartet or quatrain

    Some beautiful images here

    Reply

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