Susandale

Was   listening to hear the grace
That one morning   was
Left, the empty shoes
of a traveler’s journey
If I went there
Everywhere, I   was
And nowhere   was
Far enough
Was   in the act of creation
Me,   into myself
Thinking nothing,
Or anything else mattered
To me
Or me to them

From every pore of earth and sky

A promise to be kept

Spring

In a knot

Tying together blossom and birds

Sun spirits

curl on April’s shoulders

And rain shadows

Slant across the earth

atremble with flowers

Waiting to be born

Hush pretty petals

Shush, winds in the trees

The willow fronds

softly

gently

sing their green-eyed

lullaby to spring

Earth of pollen and stamens
Of walls breathing in
Breathing out
With an expanding universe
Seeing with dim eyes, the spines
That hold up the nights
bending under the weight of our dreams

Dreams following a dim light
to the very edge of consciousness

There’s another light
This one cascades over shadows
And over the earth of silences
accumulating
In the segments we split

Earth of circles and chains
Of hands groping for the moon
Of bloodless hearts
Of stone souls
Of our blind feet
Stumbling down the path of being

How deep our shadows
In doorways where once we stood
Thin, distant figures
Etched in soft strokes

What always we knew
But didn’t know
we knew
Being caught in a downpour of melodies
The truth of them shining
In a sun gone to sea

Thinking for a thousand miles
Of earth to time
Of songs on slow journeys
And life quick as a eulogy
Over our buried secrets

Between aft and bow
the foam of wrath
swells to soar
hurl and rush and
heave against the winds
their volumes of vengeance

“How dare you set sail
On my domain
Allotted me before I was named

All mine
the mighty rolls
whale songs of deep and dark
dives to cast you swaying
winds that gasp
sea gulls’ screams
my power to leave you bent
with obeisance

I am the rage of life
Swooping, crashing
into broken pieces
thrashing, gathering,
swelling into knotted coils
rolling in and over
the shivery earth and its quaking creatures

Mine, the bone and brunt of corals
currents that swell
and shrink
with the dance of life

Mine,
the blood thirst of sharks
The scales and fins
knifing through my bulk
of wet and salt

Mine first and given you
the water from my coral veins
And the moon-driven stare
of being
reflected on the dark waters of night.”

Comes the night that swallows our feeble lights
And the moonstruck girl who sleeps under a gypsy moon
There is one day and a hundred years
Of the slow death of life
When burns a brazen sun
And howl contemptuous winds
There is a sad boy who
Stands under a broken bridge
And sells his songs
For a sixpence and a memory
There are loves’ contortions: fierce, false
Spawning along a boulevard of broken dreams
And rains cold, that sing one kind of song
The barren sands, another
There are mystic dreads pounding at the door of dark
Songs ringing with the skirling music
That transcends earth and time

And at the far edges of yesterday
On the seaward side of tomorrow
Lamplights are fading
And the heavy-lidded eyes of the moon
Are closing on a fate that dares to dream

In the thin light of March
When naked trees wear
Only voices of the past
Then do I rewind remembrance
Time velvet in depths of shadows
Weightless dreams and distant figures
Standing in nocturnal doors
Light and the way it creates
Atmosphere around the years
The way light falls on yesterday
With its breath of mist
Feathers drawn across
The wet paint of memory
Tremors – Quivers – Aloft in the air
Yesterday, with its lines crossed over
Rubbed thin, crumpled within
The fingers of fate
Ephemeral shadows shading winter windows
Luminous winter light
And the snow that dusts
My windows with dreams
Sweeping with vertical strokes
Wiping over with whitewash
Across the epitaphs of time

Mist rising from shorn fields
In it, the ghosts of autumn
Quiet, golden children
Coming to carry summer off
To a cradle of long sleep

Hold autumn close
When the sun strikes broadside
Reach into her heart of gold
One last moment

Plunder her golden orb
On the path of summer’s glory
A whispered lullaby
To rock cradle of sleep

October – on the outskirts of summer dreams
Drink deep the poem of autumn