In the midnight feel of everything,
As time unravels, balls of string,
I must admire all I have,
I must devise a way to love;
On hand, I utterly adore
The winter fjords and rushing shores,
And the rhythms do strongly beat
As he goes dancing through the street,
Dull and dusty at a glance,
Before a chasm reveals the prince,
A silence wrecks the air;
A modest beauty worth the stare,
In the low of morning sigh,
As rivers falling from the sky,
Where memories painted the trail,
In the land where there is wail;
Alone, in there, the sunlight, amber,
Of the morning-lit clamber,
Guiding the shadows, there is the Hatter,
Drawn upon, lost in matter
Material- and then that dancer
Comes forth, spiralling, a horseless prancer,
Around the soul-light;
I love that bright light,
Feeding me the taste of the better,
Whilst taking me away from the latter,
Sinless eyes cast down at Zion,
Whilst bluer ones play the liar,
Baby-steps against the strides
Of the lion who, from the fool, he hides.
Becoming what is a set
Of light versus dark and then again,
With its weathered custom,
Natural for the love of loving,
When winter’s for the mourning soul,
Summer has its ultimate goal
To lead the dance, an onwards roll,
To engulf the bluest hole,
A Tarantella cover folded
Over the heart that has been gilded;
A motion of the troubled follower,
Doubled by the pilgrim’s non-sequitur,
The music of some feathered pair,
Coupled with that of English flair;
The waterfall is touched to the floor,
Not stopped by any sense called,
And, in the sixth perception,
From before sight’s first conception,
I see it all, the rise and fall
Of the lover’s troubadour call;
There lies the present mystery,
Anew, it gives thrills to me,
Eccentric hills and meadows
Are the landscape framed by letters;
Hand-in-hand the secrets go,
Far too fast, yet far too slow
For me to comprehend
All the time I’ve lost or spent,
The messages beyond my eyes
That brings out heart’s surprise,
It’s the countless age of youth,
Burnt by the once-and-stingy truth
That life sees in a concave row,
No, the woodland path wavers to and fro,
With polished shoes and diamond floor
Living, splendid, evermore
In my mind and life,
Against the ever-growing strife,
That centre of everything,
What becomes not autumn nor spring;
When the eye of the storm
Is thrust upon the lazy port,
As kindness brought forth from the soul,
Can leave an ever-growing hole,
Left to languish in humility,
And words are what is left of me
When the ocean draws its way back,
When the wood is left hanging slack,
When the dance is stopped,
Leaving the singer with her lot,
For all, by chance, she has to say,
To imagine things, to pine the day away;
When her job is cast aside,
When another is the Bride,
She has to match her ends to the sky,
Patch up a clouded, half-drawn lie
With tales of the mighty dear,
Alone on a cliff so sheer,
Rescued by the hand of stone,
Come again, the prince’s throne;
Oil, wax and cedar-wood,
I’d change the past if I could,
Instead thought is given its way forth:
Painting a mountain out of love,
Where there is nothing left to say
But to dream out a way:
Like a chess piece under awe,
And as my eyes become soar,
I still say I utterly adore
That king of moves across the floor.

Author guidance for This poem

Critique requested. What do you think of this? It's the longest of my poems, 100 lines. It's essentially a love poem, and a poem of praise, but it also looks to the past, as well as the future, and contemplates change versus existentialism. Is love always existing? Or does it only come into being when you have felt it in your heart for the first time? What makes love eternal? Is it the passage of it between two people- or is it the constant flow from only one?

Or, you could just look at it for the metaphorical content. My main theme is that of the nature of love, or nature and love together; there is also dance, as the persona praises her dancer-lover. I put rhythm and music references in, as they fit with dance, and as I enjoy music very much myself.
And, yes, as always with my poems, it's packed full of references that I alone would get!

'Consummation', the follow-up: http://www.protagonize.com/poem/consummation

updated Feb 19 by SumnerzAngel