The Northern Lights

by tfawcus

Dissolved lights rise like spectral eyes
when Viking gods awake the sky’s
haphazard glow. A writhing show
of rose and bruise begins to grow.

As forked tongues snake, their eerie wake
recalls brave men who’ve crossed the lake
of time; their pyre, a restless fire.
Illusions form a firefly choir

in flight, a symphony of light
to mystify a star-strewn night
of eldrich spells above the hell
of kraken deeps, where monsters dwell.

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Recognized

"Leonine rhyme occurs when a word near the middle of the line rhymes with a word at the end. Thus Alfred, Lord Tennyson writes in The Princess (1847):
"The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory" [from The Poet's Glossary by Edward Hirsch]

Glossary
Wake: a social gathering associated with death, usually held before a funeral
Pyre: a heap of combustible material, especially one for burning a corpse as part of a funeral ceremony.
Eldritch: weird and sinister or ghostly
Kraken: a legendary sea monster of giant size that is said to dwell off the coasts of Norway

By Arctic light - Frank Olsen (Own work Photo by Frank Olsen, Tromsoe, Norway.) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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An experiment in leonine rhyme

The Northern Lights

by tfawcus

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