Fate

By David Blalock

Billowing castles of airborne dust,
Rolling vistas of heavens,
Night-blown beings of the loveless lust,
Comp'ny the beast in soaring.
     And only 'mongst them, through them
    Might Unicorn find inner peace.
    By regarding reflections from prisms
    Find the key to final release.
But some force irresistibly draws it
Deeper within the Light's shadow,
Til it knows that the feeling within it
Do nothing to lift it enow.
    And weeping won't stop this, halt this;
    A headlong descent into life,
    Nor snarling disgust at the kisses,
    Those meaningless meaning too rife
            With the empty despair.

(Publ. in 1994 by World of Poetry Press)

Author's Note:
I have written a series of poems around the Arabic image of the unicorn: winged and black. It represents the baser instincts in man in a way that is not conveyed by the more western unicorn. Although westerners allow that the nature of the beast can only be tamed by the innocence of a virgin, they do not address the why of that assertion. I have tried to capture that reason in these poems.

E-mail:jrlthran@memphisonline.com