With leathery hands the stitched-up skin

lain over the worn and worked up wheels

Gears that sound with a pitched-up spin

made nowhere near this place surreal.

Heaven heard the pin inserted,

with an earth tone unrehearsed

Seven words with eyes diverted,

spoken without one curse.

Claimed by the mystic these spells divined

in harmless apathetic rhyme

Tamed the cryptic with their bells

and broke the seal on seven hells.

Daring she walked in moonlit grace,

the path uneasy through the halls

until the mirror that laughed in her face

stared from those unholy walls

Bare the bleached and unscratched soles

on the marble so refined

as the spirit drifting cold

crossed the bar on waves of time

For enter now the story ark

that sails yet in myth and whispers

There they met in moral quandaries

and their own open shivers

He in turn did not unwind

the clockwork apparatus

Nor did he think to find

someone of her stature or her status

Yet the belle, the maiden fair,

came all the same into his dream

and when the moment held him there

it was more than the moment seemed

For the river of the world below

carried this enigma now

and the breathless void

where worlds collide

drew them in somehow.

Shifting strong in currents long

they nearly did not escape

until the voices of the ocean song

led them out into the wake

The starlit drapes hung down

The winds were calm that night

and all the world did bow

at these true lovers' sight

A candle yet left burning

even unto this day

still is said in legend

to lead back into that bay

For each night in the walk

of the mind's lonely eye

they return to the place

where dreamers' hearts abide