mark ryan
スカイラーク
A soul rises, falls, and rises again in this luminous journey through love, loss, memory, and rebirth. Skylark follows the spirit across earth and sky as it sheds old forms and learns to fly once more, moving through landscapes both real and imagined. These poems travel deserts, oceans, galaxies, and the quiet inner worlds where the human heart breaks, softens, and slowly remakes itself. Each setting becomes a mirror for the soul’s shifting shape, revealing the fragile places where pain settles and the unexpected moments where light returns.
Guided by myth, by the shimmer of distant stars, and by the quiet pull of the divine, the skylark becomes a symbol of transformation. Its flight traces the arc of becoming, showing how a life can fracture and still find its way back to wholeness. The poems linger in the ache of being alive, in the weight of memory, and in the small, luminous truths that rise from the ruins.
This collection speaks to anyone who has fallen, endured, and continued forward despite the heaviness of the world. It is a book for those who have stood at the edge of themselves and chosen to rise again, carrying new light into the sky.
Heavy feathers and a heavy soul carry the burden of many lives, patterned into the plumage like the ink of the gods. The skylark is tethered and tired, held in the material realm despite wings meant for wandering. Memories move through its small body like wind, stirring past lives and old pains. Meadows glitter like jewels and forests shift like a green sea breathing life into the lungs. Yet with each breath comes the soil and sand of time, settling as ancestral dust in the bones. The earth offers quiet wisdom, but gravity and expectation keep the bird pressed to the ground, waiting in the ache of the human condition.
A spark of light appears, a hand reaching from beyond the veil. The air softens with ume blossom and the memory of a lingering kiss. The wings tremble and fail at first, torn from the core, but slow regrowth follows the breath of heaven. Wind and tears become a ritual of endurance as the skylark climbs. Mountain air and lunar drops cleanse the feathers while the sun burns away effort’s ache. Above, the Floating Bridge of Heaven glimmers between sun and moon, calling the bird toward a realm where spirit outweighs gravity.
There is a place where heaven and earth touch, where almost light and almost darkness drift like celestial visions. The cosmic thread hums across the horizon, plucked by god and the ancestors who came before. The skylark recognises itself in those histories and hesitates at the edge of revelation. A blossom of knowing opens within and a sakura petal slips from the beak. The Song pours out as truth, carrying clarity and the weight of all that has been and all that will come. In that suspended moment, the skylark becomes a living bridge between worlds, a single life stretched across eternities.
Within the beating human heart, a quiet wisdom stirs. Warmth returns to the feathers and the blood that was shed forms stronger bones. A murmur rises in the soul, carrying a new scent from the edge of time. The egg of pain cracks open and the remnants of death fall away. The skylark screams into life again as dust and light wash over it with remembered truth. The earth spins faster and the moon hangs lower, grounding the bird in familiar terrain. Trees and oceans tether it once more, but now there is a knowing that was not there before. Heaven bends toward the earth like petals in bloom, calling for a new Song to rise.
SOAR
That sweet melody of promises you made to break.
From that little bird inside your heart.
As the daylight fades, it bursts into flames.
Its burning wings signalling the setting sun.
Falling feathers that tickle my soul.
Oh little bird, where have you gone?
Out of the air and into the dark?
One day you will find me, your naked sky to soar within.
Scattering stardust in a different light.
SOARING
You made this sky your own, clogging it with stars.
Oh sweet little bird, are you a phoenix in disguise?
Where have you gone, to light different skies?
I look for you always, in the midnight sun.
Hoping you’re no longer afraid of the dark.
Looking for that birdsong, to vibrate my own heart.
Aviate this dream of mine, deep in the feathers and down.
Peck it into reality.
And fly me to your moon.