Surfacing (I had written every stanza except this first one and I was trying to develop a nice beginning to the poem. As I was doing so and listening to the song "Surface," by Ashengrace, the beginning became obvious, and so this first line is a nice beginning for the poem and a little hidden "tribute" to the song I used for atmosphere while completing this part of the poem.)
It all comes full circle
Entwined, inside a sphere of fire
As if the phoenix itself had lent the flame (I do this a lot actually, putting subtle references in poems to lines or themes from other poems I've written. The reference here is to the theme of the phoenix, which I also used in the poem "Ascension," which can be found here.)
Seamless
Without fault or flaw
A soul without corruption or comparison
Inside my heart, inscribed her name (This implies that her name is inscribed inside my heart, written in a way that would allow the word "name" to rhyme with the word "flame" from the previous stanza; it's poetic and functional! It also sets the rhyme scheme for the poem, which is to have the last word of the stanza rhyme with the last word of the stanza above it. However, it's a very (VERY) "loose" rhyme scheme, as you'll probably notice as the poem progresses. This was meant to be a somewhat abstract-formed poem from the beginning anyway, though, so I didn't obsess too much about each word rhyming just perfectly.)
Embrace
I dreamt this once
You and I
Heavenbliss (A word I just kind of made up, which actually leads into the very next stanza, talking about word forms and meanings)
Words take on new forms
New meanings
When placed beside the context of you
Cherish this
Symmetry in everything
Perplexity in all
Disparity an obsolete void
That never now exists
It's action
And the equal and apposite reaction (This is not a misspelling, as many people would probably initially assume; it's actually an intentional play on words, utilizing the word apposite, which is defined as appropriate, related, or pertinent. I like the entirely different, yet completely meaningful, interpretation that this gives to the more commonly-used phrase of "equal and opposite reaction.")
Equilibrium in motion
If only, picture this (Like I said, it's a pretty loose and somewhat abstract rhyme scheme I'm using here, as made obvious by attempts such as this to use "picture this" to sound similar to "exists" from the stanza above.)
Aetherius (heaven)
Angelus (angel)
Forma decorus (beautiful image or form)
Ad infinitum (to infinity)
These are all Latin words or phrases, and I included their English meanings in the original version so that (1) people would know what I was saying here and not think that I had begun speaking in tongues, and (2) I kind of liked the effect of imagining the words in parentheses being spoken more softly after each initial Latin phrase, similar to the effect of having two vocalists intertwine melodies as they sing different lines together as a cohesive whole. I suppose that I should also disclose here that I have not suddenly inherited the ability to speak fluent Latin; rather, I had incorporated "Angelus" and "Ad infinitum" into my rough draft of this poem and decided I'd like to add a couple more words/lines to allow me to have an entire stanza of words spoken in Latin. I consulted a very handy website (http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookdown.pl) to help me find the Latin translations of the other words I wanted to use in that stanza. I liked the Latin translation for Heaven ("Aetherius") so much that I ended up using that as the title for the poem. Incidentally, this is the one stanza that does not have a follow-up rhyme within the next stanza, because I wasn't even going to attempt to try to think of a rhyme for "Ad infinitum" [although I imagine it probably could be done].)
It's something inside
Something more than just the outside
That makes me want to liberate;
A sort of heartbound duty (The spell-check function on my computer kept insisting [rather persistently, I might add] that I separate "heartbound" into two words [heart bound]; however, I had decided early on that I was going to use the words the way I wanted in this poem [see above], and it only made sense here that these two words should indeed be "bound" together to form the one word of "heartbound." The spell-check program finally conceded and admitted defeat after I manually changed the spelling for the fifth time and used the "Tools" function to command it to ignore that spelling of the word.)
So go ahead, proliferate -- (an extra loose rhyme here, with "proliferate" and "liberate," just because it came to me naturally and seemed to work somehow; maybe it also makes up for my decision to not rhyme anything with "ad infinitum" a couple of stanzas above [some sort of "poem writer's guilt," perhaps??])
Release the shades of blue;
Because inside your salient eyes, (salient: standing out; of notable significance -- this definition of the word just seemed really fitting for this part of the poem)
This blue is only beauty.
(The figurative meaning of this last stanza is that even the shades of blue mood or emotion are being encouraged to be let loose and "proliferate" [grow rapidly], because these shades of blue are only beautiful when they filtrate through her befittingly blue eyes.)
