The Santa Ana Poem of the Week is “Mirage and Horizon” by Greg Patrick

The Santa Ana Literary Association will be presenting a new poem by a local poet every week this year. This week’s poem is “Mirage and Horizon” by Greg Patrick.

Mirage and Horizon

By: Greg Patrick

Nathaniel Hawthorne had once written that “moonlight is sculpture” and so it was an apparitional mirage of a poet nomad’s imagery, conjuring by incantation where poetry becomes spells…a vision recreated in dream’s own image from the desert of isolation. Like a lone sculptor who molds the divine from stone or the soloist who steps free of the strings to speak the words, the composer pacing with the lion in the music notes till he casts open the window of his hermitage just to see the stars and in promethean theft drawn from their celestial fire… for there are no kindred spirits below who remember and are heirs to that entrusted song.

Conjuring the vision of goddess. Huntress to the huntsman from the stuff of dream’s
image reconstructing in fast forward, bygone castle towers awaiting homecoming of a rightful
prince, take form as if before an exiled soldier returning to a home front in ruins. The city lights
with their gaudy displays seem like distant minarets with a tempter gesturing around to the loftier idealist, the sad prince on pilgrimage.

“All of this can be yours!” He gestures grandly with a showman’s flourish.

But no… He has his own way through that painted desert… For golden age is not a gilded
cage that he disdains. By moonlight alone where dreams seem credible, tangible as a ghost’s
caress the vision takes shape. The words even if whispered softly as waves to the shore like
depth serenading the shallow, were a battle cry too resounding to be anything but soundless to
the crowds and passerby but for the cry of the heart alone like a mute composer’s and blind
bard’s song. Though the soul can live by muse alone it is not the heart’s sustenance but its craving like a desert lion at the oasis.

And by the lyre and campfire the nomad croons by the light of a lifetime’s moons:
Serpent trails across the sands and a sieve of sand through nomad’s hands
in storm-swept lands where nightmares hide till dreams awake by the moon of the corsair tide
and the Magi beckoned by the star doth ride
for the Emperor’s word will not abide
until the desert lion strays from its pride
and songs anew begin by the fireside…

“Moonlight is sculpture” as a midnight scribe wrote… Like a gambler’s frailly balanced
card castle for those who dare against the odds, dreams built of moonbeams for those who
walked the dreamscapes of the heart till dawn without substance.

Bio: Originally from Ireland, Greg Patrick has performed regularly at the Santa Ana Gypsy Den, as well as the Santora Building. A part time resident of OC but always a staunch ally and friend of the displaced Santora Artists. He has been published several times in local and international publications.