A Merrow
Hiding
In a woman’s body
Her world
Limned
Within the puerile
Extent
Of her consciousness.

And rising above her
Solid as Newcastle coal
Lir
His face
A web of ratlines
Carved by the wind
And in his eyes
The sea.

She swims in this
Impression
His voice a nurses balm
Crisp as lager
Pulling her
Up
Up
Until she breaches
The bow wave
Back arched
Breath stilled

And then sinks
Beneath him
Believing
Nothing will hurt her
While he covers her
From the cold.

Your words
Would burst up through
The grikes and clints
A sweet green grout
That took root
Under the gray slab
And each word
A grass moth
Gathering sugar
From the Milkwort
For the cold days
To come.

You were always
Kind to me
In this river of life
With its currents
And hidden undertows
And the things
That scared me into
Threading.
I was no Otter
I never learned
The playful art
Of splashing
Through the sunny
Moments
While the clouds
Gathered like sisters
But you always
Got me moving.
Using words
Like steps
Filling my page
With courage.

Tell me your troubles
And I’ll tell you mine
And meanwhile the
Great world spins
We are artists
En plein air
Your impressionistic strokes
Coalesce into a formless
Gray corona
Beneath the sea.
It might be a shark
Or a porpoise
I will never know
Until it rises to the surface
Will it eat
or draw breath?

My strokes are baroque
A tenebristic composition
Of dark and light tones
A bee on a peony
Your eyes fall to its
Barbed stinger

Show me your soul
And I will show you mine
And meanwhile
It’s all an art
On how we spin things

How will you know
When you pass through a forest
If your eyes are
Glued to the road
How will you see all the life
That abounds
If your eyes are
Always closed

How will you hear
All the sounds in the air
How will you witness
The beauty that’s there
If you can’t spare a minute
For the red breasted Linnet
Or the little green Finch
And her operatic pitch

Or just for a moment
Stop to admire
The dappled twig arbors
And the great blue sky
Heaven has spilled out
All of her flavors
And all of this beauty
Is just yours to savor
If you stop for a second
The Larks song is pliant
Her cantor an echo
That her fledglings can follow.

She has a pretty house
With a mansard roof
Punctured with dormer windows
And guests climb
Up the steps
Like rapping woodpeckers
Weighted down
With their baggage.
She opens her door
And they file in
Sometimes weary
From their journey
Sometimes angry
From their travails.
Sometimes complaining
Sometimes malicious
Sometimes happy.

She entertains them anyway
Souls in the night
They are all searching for something
Das Ding
Some are armed with Bruntons
So they might navigate a path
In the dark
But the stars know where
You are
Better to be still
So they can shine their light on you.

I can hear it in the
Atonal scraping of my chair
Across the scuffed linoleum
In the cessant whirring of the fridge
And the dull hum of the fan
Familiar sounds
I have heard a thousand times before
They are nothing in themselves
Not happy or sad
Only known
And yet it is the same with your voice
Creeping out from under a prenumbral
A shy beam of light
I recognize its form
Though it is nothing in itself
Not happy or sad
Only known
A familiar sound

*And yet I do not know you.