…of stripes

I am abandoned in seas of night
drifting listless and wraithlike
listening to the ticking clock
as my words, frail and fragile, escape me
their echoes lingering just out of reach
lost in my own garden, I wander
circling in beautiful solitude
these stripes of mine confuse and obscure
shapeshifting and superficial
my zebra petals and tiger leaves
draped like snakes around naked trees
now twisting helpless upon the breeze
they hide skin deep, where the price I pay is pain
they bleed away with the first fall of rain
where they fade. buried out of reach
beyond the tendrils of endless time
my unseen birds, their songs calling hollow and unheard
their colours bleeding softly into darkness
captured by capricious winds
scattered and broken now collecting dust in ghostly shadows
a symphony of stripes still circling the night
like the ripples raised by a drowning stone
as it slowly sinks into the swirling shallows alone
© Ann Bagnall