A country road with
a hazel glow, that
settles around the
watching lazy clouds.

Some kindly fox
that creeps and sits,
camouflaged in a
familiar field of corn.

The floating flies that
swarm adrift, they’re
careful not to try to
care about anything.

Smells of sweet air,
of apples and of pears
and of heat that hugs
your drooping nose.

This land which I don’t
know, and never have I
been will allow me to
visit maybe one day.

My knees always ache when it rains. It feels like thunderstorms down there.
Imbriferous skies quake and pour. In rows of misery below, black umbrellas and grim faces held in raincoat hoods move up and down the hill slopes. Impluvious bodies move as a current – up and then down, up and then down – carving new streams of black into the long grass.
Officers clothed in raincoats and trash bags tug at the leashes of baying bloodhounds, slipping in the mud.
I sit in the spindrift – the icy pinprick of the heavy rain turning my face raw. Splashes of mud freckle my pink cheeks. The rain flogs every black umbrella to a monotonous rhythm. Thunder rolls like a rock avalanche into a mountain creek. Corn stalks and men alike are bent beneath sheets of rain. Flashes of light across the sky smell like Sulphur. The earth a deafening drone, continuous, never-ending, and in that drone swept the black umbrellas and raincoats, one by one, two by two, shifting, streaming, flowing stern-faced and wretched. From the top of the hills they pour, pooling and spreading out into the fields like a black river.
A river of desperate life, searching for the dead.

Has arrived.
Silent rows stand breathless,
Sweating in the dense heat,
Of August.

Blackbirds do not yet circle;
The sheaves are still too young,
Kernels burgeoning sweetness,
Hiding from the ravagers
Soon to come.

The tall field, burdened in the heat
Broods over tassels brown,
Ripens corn beneath a yellow sun,
Waits the pickers' marauding hands,
The tractor-roar of silage foragers,
And relentless tearing of plows.

hear it hurgling

The corn leaves sways with the wind.
So does my heart
Your coming and going is like that of a sparrow
A few years in length.

The raindrops are falling on my head, forever drenching me
I was with you in the forest, and I watched you as you grinned.
Though those days are a silhouette, no longer in my possession
The rain is still here, I don't know what will follow

Your dark eyes, hazel, if you look too close, betrayed me
I gave you my collections, but you tore them apart,
I wish I had never listened.
I wonder if I will fly again, I wonder what will give me strength.

I don't even know if I'm going to end this foolishness in making you see,
That you had become the subject of my depression.

But I'm not letting go.
I'm not letting go just yet.




Here I am, in the company of myself.
Shattered?
Perhaps I should have never gathered the bread.

It was about six in the evening
Six in the evening when juvenile lust is tumescent
And Anne McKilroy made her lips available
To mine
In the back of the choir outing charabanc
She did not mind the smell of corn beef
Lingering from my lunch time sandwich

i can't help it,
everyday,
whatever I do,
we grow older.

i'd love to grow old with you,
but I'm not ready to give up my youth.

heavenly thoughts in you,
nostalgic thoughts untrue:
take me back to when
bike rides and ice cream ruled my land.

steak on the grill, corn on the cob,
fed my summer trance.

take me back to when
a simple sunset caught my glance.