The Isle of Unwoven Dreams
Beyond the reach of mortal ships that creep,
There dwelt a soul enshrouded in the mist,
Whose heart, a lantern none had ever kissed.
His name, Elias, whispered by the brine,
A painter of the sea’s ephemeral sign.
His hands, like gulls, would dance ’cross canvas pale,
To trap the fleeting light in storm’s travail.
Yet men deemed mad the visions he pursued—
The world saw chaos where he saw the nude
And trembling truth of waves that ne’er repeat,
Of winds that carved their sorrows in the sleet.
One eve, as twilight bled its muted gold,
A vessel came, its sails by gales controlled,
And from its belly stepped a form divine—
A woman cloaked in dusk’s uncertain line.
Her eyes held constellations yet uncharted,
Her voice, a hymn the lonely sea had started.
“I seek,” she said, “the artist of the spray,
Whose brush contends with Time’s relentless sway.”
Elias, trembling ’neath his weathered eaves,
Felt centuries dissolve in autumn leaves.
She entered as the moon reclaims the night—
A silent revolution of his light.
Her name was Lira, born of foreign shores,
Where art was prized and passion knocked on doors.
She’d heard the ballads sung by wandering tides
Of one who painted what the heart derides.
In his lone cottage, hung with salt and sighs,
They spoke of beauty ’neath the seabirds’ cries.
He showed her works where waves gave birth to stars,
Where drowned men danced with kelp in liquid bars.
“You see,” he murmured, “what they name despair—
’Tis but the sea’s true face, unveiled, laid bare.”
Her finger traced a storm’s electric vein:
“These are not paintings—they’re a soul’s refrain.”
Days turned to weeks, as whispers often do,
While in his chest a forbidden flower grew.
They walked the cliffs where petrels wove their grief,
She, autumn’s breath; he, winter’s rigid leaf.
He taught her how the fog composes verse,
How tides inscribe the vows the moon coerced.
She read him sonnets from her father’s land,
Where love was not a grain beneath the sand.
Yet neither spoke the word their glances bore—
A bridge of ice above a molten core.
For she was promised to a lord’s command,
Her fate a diamond in another’s hand.
One night, as surf recited ancient lore,
She found him painting by the cavern’s door.
The work revealed a figure half-divined—
Her face, enmeshed with roots of ocean-knined.
“What’s this?” she asked, her breath a wounded dove.
“A dream,” he said, “where mortals dare to love.”
The air grew thick with all that went unsaid—
Her hand found his, the future’s thread now dead.
But footsteps echoed from the rocky path—
A servant came, bearing the lord’s cold wrath.
“Your ship awaits,” he growled like tides constrained,
“The vows are sworn, the wedding feast ordained.”
She left at dawn. No tear profaned her cheek,
For hearts can break too deep for wounds to speak.
He watched her sail become a ghostly shard,
Then turned to where his easel stood on guard.
With frenzied strokes, he summoned wave on wave,
Each hue a scream, each line a dug grave.
The sea roared approval from its throne—
At last, his art was flesh, his pain full-grown.
But when the final brushstroke sealed his tale,
The canvas burst to flames, a spectral gale.
The cottage, kindled by the reckless fire,
Became a pyre for unquenched desire.
They found him there, embraced by ash and foam,
His masterpiece reduced to cindered poem.
Yet in the coals there glowed a single trace—
Her face, unscathed by flame’s devouring grace.
Now sailors swear that when the storms descend,
Two voices through the thunder sweetly blend.
He sings of love that only ruins prove,
She answers with the peace he could not move.
Thus dreams and death upon that isle conspire,
To mock the ashes of the world’s desire.
