Prophecy

In the dust of desert sands,
Among the ruins of arrogant men,
The pages of time are still written,
Where waters flowed, the dry bed aches,
Buried beneath millenniums forgotten, lost,
Dreamers sleep, soul to soul, bone to bone,
You will not know me, nor I you,
I am because, I was and will ever so be,
Though the earth may split asunder,
The mud bricks may crumble and disappear,
The knowledge on plaster walls unknowable,
Know this: the calamity of this past,
Will become the work of your future,
To be buried by the ritual of your passing,
Joining all that were before,
Consumed by the creatures and the soil,
Sleeping the endless, godless sleep,
Of having been, and nothing more.

©2014, Donald Harbour

Tricks of the mind

Often, drifting on the edge of sleep, or
wakefulness, I am visited by ghosts.
Diaphanous images floating across memory,
lost to the passage of years, but now found.
As after a rain, a desert springs to life,
there grow long dormant seeds, friends and
lovers, words and deeds, sorrow and gladness,
pain and pleasure, all the dichotomies
of life resolved to join together again.
I find them a reassuring comfort, they are
glimpses at treasures buried by the mind’s
age, cloistered in a monks habit, hooded
by the cloth of years, gliding for an encounter
to shine their life’s lantern light upon my path,
for a moment pushing back gathering darkness,
then fading toward a sunset, into forgotten time.

©2013, Donald Harbour

What they have made me

Campbeltown, Argyll, Scotland, home of my Grandmother Elsie “Ferguson” Harbour’s family.

Awakening this morning
I am blushed with the dawn,
Standing at a frosty window
inhaling with an icy yawn,
Dogs are greeting the day
whining at the frozen grass,
You snug under the covers
my blonde blue-eyed lass,
I leave off my bathrobe
the cold good against my skin,
Feeling the call of forefathers
those Celtic Highlander men,
From deep in my sired soul
voices reach an open mental ear,
Guiding my footsteps in life
each day, week, month, and year,
There are others there to speak,
all from a far distant time,
Crafted by their ancient wisdom
knowledge carried in my mind,
I am grateful for their presence
for the things they let me know,
I am that which they have made me
a mosaic of my clan past tableau.

©2012, Donald Harbour

One man’s journey

Life has masked the years
that have tumbled through
my eyes, masked by the
event of being, of loving,
of feeling pain, of laughter,
masked by the stare of thousands
of minutes peering into the future,
remembering the past, waiting
for the next shade of evening,
a view of distant approaching
headlights down this dusty lane
that I have walked as I trod toward
that inevitable point of reason,
knowing when the mask is removed,
the eternal night without a dawn begins.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour