Yard Sale of Thoughts

Call forth that which is receding,

exposed feelings in bubbly froth,

dreams I’ve been exploiting;

themes my life keeps repeating.

Call forth the star seedlings,

those that came before

but linger for a meeting.

Even if no one comes,

phone on hold,

the tune repeating.

This body is my home –

hearth of cells,

walls of bone,

the ritual bleeding.

As time turns cartwheels

on memory’s mill,

the rushing tide needs no greeting.

©2023 | K.F. Hartless

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Cover Art: “A Sea-Spell” Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1877

The following sonnet was written a year later by Rossetti as a “double” to the painting.

Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree,
While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell
Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell,
The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea.
But to what sound her listening ear stoops she?
What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear,
In answering echoes from what planisphere,
Along the wind, along the estuary?

She sinks into her spell: and when full soon
Her lips move and she soars into her song,
What creatures of the midmost main shall throng
In furrowed surf-clouds to the summoning rune:
Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry,
And up her rock, bare-breasted, comes to die.