2013 30 Day Image Prompt Contest Book

"Journey's End" (Poetry/Day 7 Entry)

Journey’s End

Does the metronome beat of the clock ever end?
I watch the shadow’s birth and as it fade away,
infusing the world with obsidian hues,
I feel the earth’s insistent movement.
It yields to its destiny as it revolves in
a continuous circle. Another day has passed.

I grasp for the moment – but it has passed
leaving behind a wake that has no end.
Like a fragile tower of children’s blocks in
the void, it teeters but does not fall away.
It has found its purpose in movement
as it paints the universe in artificial hues.

Moving through atramentarious hues,
building upon a foundation of all that’s passed,
time itself is reduced to simple movement.
Motion is life. Stillness is the final end.
Inception began as a journey away.
Perhaps the end will be a journey …"in".

I pause to wonder: as time collapses in
will the void recolor itself in stygian hues
reformed from bits collected in travels away?
Will we collect the time that has passed
until, in a moment’s breath, we reach the end
of a journey whose purpose was only movement?

Such thoughts are halted by the movement
caused by the dance of shadows that form in
my field of vision. It is another day’s end
that proclaims its nature in darkling hues.
This artifice that I call time has passed;
another cycle completed and gone away …

… away from what is to what was. Away -
and in that instant, there is movement
that celebrates existence from what passed.
Perhaps each moment is like the Phoenix in
that it rises from its own ashes, its celebratory hues
blinding us to the ultimate end.

Further and further away, a star filled heart beats in
constant movement, painting the universe in time’s hues
until all motion has passed and we reach our journey’s end.

Notes
Day 7 – "Invalid Item" 
Prompt: Image 1
Form: Sestina The sestina is a strict ordered form of poetry, dating back to twelfth century French troubadours. It consists of six six-line (sestets) stanzas followed by a three-line envoy. Rather than use a rhyme scheme, the six ending words of the first stanza are repeated as the ending words of the other five stanzas in a set pattern. The envoy uses two of the ending words per line, again in a set pattern.

First stanza, ..1 ..2 ..3 ..4 ..5 ..6
Second stanza, ..6 ..1 ..5 .. 2 ..4 ..3
Third stanza, ..3 ..6 ..4 ..1 ..2 ..5
Fourth stanza, ..5 ..3 ..2 ..6 ..1 ..4
Fifth stanza, ..4 ..5 ..1 ..3 ..6 ..2
Sixth stanza, ..2 ..4 ..6 ..5 ..3 ..1

Concluding tercet:
middle of first line ..2, end of first line ..5
middle of second line ..4, end of second line..3
middle if third line ..6, end of third line ..1

atramentarious – ink like
stygian - infernal; hellish