A TERRIBLE BEAUTY

"and where does the phoenix go,
singing its stricken lament of terrible beauty,
its music coming from inside us,
our grief turned magically to song,
soaring away on flame-bright wings?"

from Long Game Ended, Time to Leave the Air,
Half-Blood Poems Inspired by the Stories of J.K. Rowling
by Christine Lowther

At Real Toads today, Kenia's Wednesday Challenge is to borrow a line or lines from a friend's poem, and use it as the leaping off point for a surrealistic poem of our own. My friend Chris Lowther is a highly gifted poet living on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. She has several books to her credit. I have been a fan of her work for a very long time. Chris can be found at The Natures of Christine Lowther. The lines I have drawn from , above, are italicized in my poem. I feel quite brave, putting her words in a poem with mine, so long have I admired her amazing talent.

Christine's mother was noted Vancouver poet Pat Lowther, her work highly esteemed at her untimely death in the 70's, and highly regarded still. In her daughter's gift, her talent still lives.

Where has it all gone,
scattered like pebbles
from a toddler's pail,
profligate,
as if there will always be More,
until, suddenly, there isn't?

Look back
down all of those sun-bright years,
the dark and the light,
the bitter and the sweet,
such a terrible beauty,
mixed in the crust of parched earth,
slaked by a madman's draught
at the very last moment
before expiring.

The dying's last request
is always for water,
my grandmother's long white finger
pointing at the glass
when no more was she
able to speak.
And water,
that single tear
rolling down her cheek,
as she said goodbye to it all
and began that slow slow walk
on the mountains of the moon.

The older one grows,
the heavier that backpack of grief,
an endless well
we can draw from at random,
our grief turned magically to song,
a heartbreaking lament
that catches in the throat,
prickling, like cactus,
a lump of regret
that can never
be swallowed,
as the hot tears
roll down one's cheeks
because it is too soon,
too soon,
to be faced with leaving.

Too fast it all goes.
Towards the end life 
begins to gallop
like a willow-whipped horse,
frothing and frantic 
to escape the lash,
hooves relentlessly pounding,
carrying us off,
all unwilling,
with still so much to do,
doomed riders
in a race
to the unknown
on which we wager
the biggest long shot
of our lives:
that somehow
we will still continue on
after death.

My kit bag of memories
is filled to the brim
with all I was given:
more laughter than tears,
more challenge than ease,
more gratitude
than can be expressed
for this magical realm
where a leaf is a miracle
and a red fox sheer brilliance,
where the gray wolf howls
through our very souls,
where loneliness
and fullness
compete
for the very same square inch
of living space
in the hearts of the solitary,
and where 
daybreak and hellfire
alike streak the sky
with Van Gogh's palette,
whose stars set us dreaming
into the dark
of that welcoming Night.