The Spectral Canvas
A painter climbed the cragged ascent, where mortal seldom flies,
To seek the muse that fled his brush, the hues he could not name,
In valleys choked with winter’s breath, where silence drowned his fame.
The winds, like ghosts of ages past, did whisper through the pines,
Their voices threading tales of woe through labyrinthine lines.
He traced the path where shadows dwelt, where light dared not remain,
And in that desolate expanse, he glimpsed her form again—
A figure wrought of mist and snow, with eyes like twilight’s tear,
Who danced upon the frozen lake, a vision half sincere.
Her hair, a cascade of midnight’s veil, her touch a zephyr’s sigh,
She turned to him with lips unsealed, yet spoke no true reply.
“What specter haunts this barren crest?” he cried to lifeless air,
“What phantom steals the warmth of art and leaves but cold despair?”
The mountain groaned, the ice replied in echoes sharp and clear:
“She dwells where time and longing meet—a soul bound by a year.”
Three nights he watched her fleeting dance, her steps a cryptic song,
Each movement etched in frost’s embrace, a right eclipsed by wrong.
On dawn’s fourth blush, she neared his fire, her voice a trembling thread:
“Why chase the shadow I’ve become, when living hearts have fled?”
“I seek the light that once I knew,” he murmured, hand outstretched,
“The blaze that turned my canvas bright, now dimmed, bereft, unfetched.
Your eyes hold storms I yearn to paint, your sorrow’s sharp design—
A masterpiece of fractured hope, a truth I cannot mine.”
She smiled, a curve of winter’s ache, and knelt beside his flame:
“Then stay until the thaw’s first breath, and learn my spectral name.
But swear by stars that never fade, by art’s unyielding creed,
To leave before the ice surrenders, lest doom fulfill its need.”
He vowed, his palm pressed to her own—a pact of snow and skin—
And so their strange communion bloomed where solitude had been.
By day, he sketched her transient grace, her form in charcoal traced,
By night, they spoke of worlds unseen, of beauty time erased.
Her laughter rang like crystal shards, her tears like rivulets sealed,
And in her gaze, he glimpsed the edge of mysteries unrevealed.
“What binds you here?” he dared to ask, as gales howled through the pass.
She froze, a statue carved of grief, then whispered, “Love… alas.”
“A pledge was made beneath this sky, two souls entwined as one,
But seasons shift, and hearts grow frail beneath the weight of sun.
He swore to return ere winter’s death, to bear me from this height,
Yet spring arrived, and with it came the shattering of light.”
Her words dissolved in frozen air, a requiem unsung,
While sorrow’s shadow draped the peaks where once her name was sung.
The painter, stricken, grasped her chill—a truth too cruel to bear:
Her lover’s bones lay deep in snow, lost to the mountain’s snare.
“Each year, I wake to tread this stage, to hope, to ache, to pine,
Until the thaw condemns once more this futile love of mine.
Now you, who wield the artist’s sight, must flee this cursed stage—
For should you see the ice recede, you’ll share my ageless cage.”
But passion’s fever gripped his soul, as deadlines loomed unseen,
He lingered past the warning winds, ensnared by love’s sharp sheen.
The sun, unyielding, climbed the skies; the glaciers wept and thinned,
And in her eyes, a terror grew—the doom she could not rescind.
“You swore!” she wept, her form a blur of mist and mounting dread,
As fissures split the lake’s glass heart, and crimson stained the red.
“The vow is broke, the chains unbound—now death reclaims its toll.
Farewell, dear fool, who dared to love a fragment of my soul.”
Her fingers melted into air, her face a fading dream,
While from the cracking chasm rose a primordial scream.
The painter clutched her vanishing scent, his cries consumed by snow,
As avalanches roared their wrath, entombing all below.
Years hence, when shepherds brave the slopes, they speak in voices low
Of shapes that dance in blizzard’s grip, of whispers in the snow.
Two phantoms waltz ’midst endless night, their tragedy engraved
In ice that never yields to spring, in hearts forever enslaved.
And on the cliffs, a spectral sketch persists through storm and time—
A man and maid, their hands outstretched, in rhythm with this rhyme.
But mortals, heed the mountain’s dirge, the oath it claims as due:
Love bound by vows the frost condemns will rend the soul in two.
