Sunrise
– for Nora

by Mark A. Murphy

Just for once, what you see will be what you get,
somewhere between illusion and reality
our lady of song will undo the knots that bind

us to the past, knots so deftly tied, woven into our flesh
that all our innocence and hopes are cast
in iron chain. Just for once, our guilty dreams

will pass us by, and we will imbibe the nectar of flowers
to assuage the fever’s fire. Somewhere in time
the dreamer and the dreamed will fish the river bed

for ancient stones, all the colours of sky,
then, they will make their feelings known
and weigh their pockets with love.

_____

Mark A. Murphy  was born in the UK in 1969. He studied philosophy as an undergraduate and poetry as a post-graduate.

His first full-length collection, Night Watch Man & Muse, is pending from Salmon Poetry (Eire) early in 2012. Most recently his  poems have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Scotland, Quarterly Literary Review (Singapore), The Warwick Review (UK), Istanbul Literature Review (Turkey), Paris Atlantic Journal (France), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Litspeak (Germany), Contemporary Literary Horizons (Romania), Munyori (India), Taj Mahal Review (India), The Tampa Review (US), Del Sol Review (US), Left Curve (US), The American Dissident (US), The Stinging Fly (Eire), Crannog Magazine (Eire) and on the DeadDrunkDublin Web site.