Nereids by Christina Murphy

I knew not why, but know
sadness dwells on Mermaids
—Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

seasoned blue and gold Nereids
decorated with borders of sky and sea;
this is how the heart knows longing
and accepts moments of chaos in between

let random wisps of vapor form the clouds
into images of magical creatures;
let the colors of the sun mend all grief
from dust to dust into twilight

for the vine clings only as long as
the tree survives, and the beginnings of
closure are cobbled together into visions that
break the encasements of flames and loss

the counterpoint of the visible is silence,
as the hopes and fallacies of desire sparkle
like so much stardust at the peripheries of time
as sea nymphs gather near some axis real or imagined

Christina Murphy’s poetry is an exploration of consciousness as subjective experience, and her poems appear in a wide range of journals and anthologies, including, PANK, Dali’s Lovechild, and Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal. Her work has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and for the Best of the Net Anthology.