+++
author = "Steffen Blake"
title = "Pale Moon"
date = "2021-09-17"
+++

Clouding breath and whispering eyes,

Shivering fingers clenched as fists,

Stuffed deep in clothed vestige.

---

My jacket offers little respite,

Each pace draws me deeper,

Each glance a bit steeper,

Into the frozen night.

---

Echoes and steps on bygone pavement,

The cracks and breaks of days gone past,

Under her gaze, The Pale Moon.

---

Craven frost shines in the grass,

Barren trees gently sway overhead.

The starlight recedes into the sea

Of the inky black night, too soon

---

Into a primeval playground of stone and metal,

My journey softly halts.

Concrete gazebos and rusted bars,

Nestled in a field of icey dew.
I know this place, but cannot name it,

Perhaps a memory of days unlived.

My mind seeks mornings of mirthful joy,

But finds naught but grasping at smoke.

---

Oh moon! Why have you shown me this time?

Who’s past do you entertain?

I stare up at the sky, and in my mind’s eye

I feel emotions well from within.

---

Framed in that night, oh frosty and slight,

A picturesque scene I recall.

The cold fog in the air gave rise to a sight,

The trees arms encircling her light,

I’m left breathless before The Pale Moon.

---

Soft snow gently twinkles through this scene,

Gently falling and twisting, reflecting and glinting,

If I close my eyes now, I can still recall it,

That majestic beauty, The Pale Moon.

---

My breath catches sharp,

The welling tears come to a halt.

A secret dark has crept on me.
Something draws near now, creeping and itching,

A primordial force is at play.

I cry out as the pale moon is swallowed by night,

Her ivory shine collapsed whole.

---

Grey and blue awash my sight,

And I can hear voices softly whispering.

“You are not safe here, oh child of man”

“Who dares to sail into doom?”

---

My heart races and I resume my pace,

And down that battered pavement I hurry.

Each step takes me deeper,

Each breath I draw steeper,

The shadows surround me and my pace becomes unsure.

---

I cast my gaze about, lost within doubt,

This barren and haunted domain I naught recognize.

I have been transported to a place beyond reason,

The Realm of the Unknown.

---

Darkness parts and gives way to a new cold night, 

But in a world I cannot place.

Filled with great looming and cracking architecture.
An ancient palace of broken balance,

With charred churches and bedraggled roads.

Perhaps once a place of piety,

But now just a forgotten echo of times long ago.

---

One great oak tree with a crack down its midst,

Stands tall in the misty square.

A force against time, of worlds gone by,

In the center of this realm.

---

I stand still unmoving, my breath caught in my throat,

At the sight I do behold.

For hanging bright above this barren world,

Shines not one, but two Moons!

---

The first I recognize, my companion Pale Moon,

But the other is alien and unknown.

I do not know this Moon, it is foreign to I,

Blood red it hangs, bathing the night in crimson.

---

The Red Moon, he sings a song to me then,

One of fear and curdling chill.

Then she whispered, “Begone child, this place is not for you”

And clad in sweat, in my bed, I am awakon.