Horizon of the Sea
Alison Eastley

“What could be more lovely than a winter night
like this when the moon shines out of a cloudless
sky upon the glittering fresh fallen snow?”
Lady Murasaki 974-1032

“The first phase of Saturn is black, Jupiter; ash-grey,
the moon; white, Venus changes from bluish-green
to a pale red, Mars from reddish yellow to the bright
colors of a peacock’s tail, and the sun tends from
pale yellow toward the deep purple of the red dawn”
while the world spins between sulphur and mercury, fire
and water, light and dark, this polarity we resist as if
a shadow doesn’t have a silhouette similar to the palm
of your hand I could read as a landscape of mountains,
valleys and rivers. Like a cipher trying to decipher the
chance of romance by observing the spread of an eagle’s
wing or this cold pebble I finger until the sense of small
warmth waves the final line against the sea’s horizon.

Quote taken from Speculum veritatis, 17th century