Dusk & DawnPt. VI She Is Dawn
by Michael A. Casares

I am locked behind a glacier cage,
a wall formed of ice.
I am dying.
Winter has bested me.
Hypothermia swarms around my grace,
eating me,
my intoxication-
my death.

She appears.
Walking through the screen of white,
peircing through the clouds.
Tender grace places my head in
her lap.
Her hands warmly caress my face.

Layers thick- calloused and permafrost
imbed deep,
moons revolve around within
carving their shapes in their silent vigil.
A fine shred, eliptic white purge
comes out as perhaps the ice has
reached a thaw.

Her fingers caress like sunspots.
What is this?
The icen walls are taken unweary.
They begin their anguished trickle.
What causes this feel within?
What paradox makes the blood warm?
And what enigma forces the fires to burn?
I look up.
Do my eyes see the sun on the horizon?

Sunrays, beams angelic and heavenly,
dance throughout my body-
calming the blizzard,
calming the freeze.
And I see her amidst the radiant
light,
the core of a burning sun.

She is dawn.
She the avenger,
she the liberator,
has come to set me free.
And from the light I shall turn away-
no more.
For she melts that cage
that looms, once solid, within.
Waters of life swell forth
and the moon - screeching out her
primitively morbid cry-
sets,
releasing her frozen and impenetrable stare.

My body becomes flesh as the
sun arcs across the sky.
Amidst the water,
tears fall with passion for freedom.
How long had it been that I
tortured myself behind a wall of ice?
How long had I depraved myself?

Certainly, my fallen flesh would have
extinguished
had not dawn come
and embrace me as she does.

I stare up into her eyes,
where the sun dreams.
Fiery desire pulls me into her
and we are one,
king and queen of a paradise
'neath the warm sun's gaze.