Psalm


A shawl of comfort came with the dark as she stood in her tartan cloak outside the castle in the deepness of night, her world lit by a million stars, with no sound but that of the silken river between reeds and stones, winding towards the edge of dreams...

she knew each golden, glittering star that hung in the brooding silence of night...a breath of air brought fragments of song from the chapel far below, tugging her heartstrings, bidding her go...but then one night great blackness fell, leaden, silent and heavy...and she heard the whisper of owls wings, and met the glint of his golden eyes...trees were black on a blacker sky...no moon, no light, no psalm of the stars and the river sullenly silent...

until at last at the rise of sun, beyond the luminous edge of the hills, Cessford came alive...and there in greening grass of spring lay millions and millions of golden stars that had fallen from velvet skies...

for days they shone, and smiled, and sang laments for blackened nights.. and the Night Gods listened...

slowly the golden stars became puffs of white, and a playful wind chased over the grass filling the air with her Dandelion wishes...which dance still in the nightimes skies... as she sings her Psalm to those golden stars!

pim claridge