Windy Alder Swamp
© Surazeus
2025 03 22

When I find at last the wild alder swamp
where, many years ago before my birth
Jack Frost, the mad-eyed seer of Vermont,
found winter garden of red-berried snow,
I see rancid paradise he described
that ever floats between Heaven and Earth.

His gaunt luxuriating beast of fate
still lurks in shadows of this alder swamp
where trees begin to bud in spring-flared light
that strips my soul of anguished self-concern
so I stand denuded and vulnerable
to close inspection of late-winter sun.

Intense anxiety of wordless fear
swells thick inside my heart with thwarted hope
for something beautiful beyond this pain
that surges ocean tides of bitter faith
in dark depression of black moody sky,
till I express despair with harpy cry.

Stuck in blackening phase of alchemy
that sears my heart with tangled energy,
I breathe deep foul scent of the alder swamp,
suppressed by frigid frost of winter gloom,
then harmonize expressive melody
in hopeful tones of weird aggressive hymn.

With sudden whir of sober-feathered birds,
that swoop through matrix of time-twisted limbs,
I feel depressive passion bloom awake
with flowers bursting from leaf-matted soil
in words far sadder than the mist-veiled moon
that glows indifferently with pretty light.

Still on the forlorn road of vanished hope
in windy alder swamp of hungry birds,
I sense storm clouds fly tattered over hills
reflected in cracked quartz stone in my hand
that refracts depression with moon-white gleam
so I find words to express how I feel.

Rain-soaked boughs of alders overhead
shake water of lost Heaven on my face,
so I crouch by sky-silver pond of truth,
and almost caress rippling waves with hands
that feel vibration of this ancient Earth
pulse in tune with beating heart in my breast.

So I decide to choose less traveled road
from winter garden in the alder swamp
that bends through undergrowth of memories
to free my heart from forest of regret
so I can measure difference of my doubt
through choices I make that create my fate.

surazeus.blogspot.com/2025/03/…

Orpheus finds Robert Frost in the winter garden of the alder swamp where they chit-chat about anxiety that drives the human desire to create beautiful art in a seemingly-hostile world.

#Poetry #Poem #Pastoral #Necropastoral #MetaModernism #MetaRomanticism #NewSublimity #NewRomanticism #AmericanDream #Cinemism #Existentialism #Surrealism #NegativeCapability #NewGnosticism #MetaRealism #NewTranscendentalism #Astarism