they all turned their faces away
bore flares
of sleeping suns
sails billowing
unfurling stems
heavy with blood orange petals
carpeted burgundy
twigs
cracked stone
acorns
riverbank of leaves
flaxen deeply
covered in willow hair
tidal river’s race
idyll

dust, wood
the ground grows soft there
a sheet of pine needles
footprints etched into
the chestnut hues of autumnal life
softly the air gives way to raindrops
feeding the trees,
their steeples covering
creatures who wander their corridor
merging into the tarmac
stippled with pebbles
and freckles of water and fire

unripe
one slender shoot
growing through the
shadows of serpentine weeds
the blackest of stones
blinded
in shrouds of whole brilliant suns
nectarine fire in tongues of holy flame
in the grain of dormant seeds
within creatures
sleeping, waiting to be saved

velvet sheets
threaded from shimmering webs
glacier streams
alabaster; moonbeams
burnished drop of light
sleeping with eyelids
painted in shades of
pearl

rain is sifting through the leaves              
nests of bramble, blackberry  
ferns green and resting in
noon's shadowed face
shining drops, halcyon
washing April blue until
the moon blinks

why do the trees hug the shoreline so closely?
in twists of tangled arms
green flags, sprouting twigs
the lonely glare, floating in between the mirrored
crisp fractals of light
sliced into the blue deep
a tiny paper boat, sprigged with daisies
sailing the horizon
balancing an endless tightrope
tipping into the pulsing heart of the sky
over the edge
of the world.

light
in places of shadowed hearth
arms of candle fire reach through the window panes
into the breath of frozen lips, the ballerinas of frost who dance into sleep
on all the leaves  in swathes of amber flood, the sun sinks down his head to rest
in beds of fire-colored moths,  clumps of dew and bracken hedge