The Poetry of Dreams (3) The Coda

The Portal of Thought - Doors, by Sylvia Pekarek

The angel soft
And holy light
Are side by side
The sinister
Of shadow and
Its flaming doors.
There is no step
To take outside,
No saving grace
That we may turn
For miracles.
The miracles
Shall come as they
Are wont to do,
Without our wish
Or prayer or hope.
For this is of
Another realm –
The pivotal
And fierce face-off
Which we have seen
Only in art
Is going on
This moment now.
The threshold of
The open door
Is where they stand
Like sentinels
Alert and poised
To shut the door.
This painting of
It all and more
Illuminates –
So we at least
May understand
The mysteries
And guarded stance
Of good and bad,
So we at least
May know they’re there
And who is whom,
When rooms are dark
And daylight blinds.

The Poetry of Dreams (Part 3) - The Coda © Ron Villejo

After spending a few days figuring out how to write this poem, then a few hours writing the first two parts of it – and struggling a bit – The Coda came pouring out of me, as if from nowhere that I can imagine. I honestly don’t know where this came from, except from some divine intervention that tapped its hand on my forehead. There is no classic poetic structure I draw from, except that it’s in iambic di-meter. It falls under the umbrella of ‘blank verse’ – non-rhyming metered verse.

The Coda is, of course, about good and evil. We don’t really see these, except through our choices and actions and those of others. It is art, I believe, that helps us best to understand these – that illuminates the ‘fierce face-off’ between the two. If you, my dear friends, can subscribe to the idea that I’ve just written a musical score here – hence, the terms ‘prelude,’ ‘symphony’ and ‘coda’ – then another musical process comes to mind, i.e., ‘crescendo.’ Everything builds up to this last part – The Coda!