All silent in the months of grace
When frosty blankets fall across the hills
And fields where birds once sang their verse,
But melody of wind is all we know.
These lands to die are not yet dead
Though bee does mourn for blooms and for himself
When beetle joints go stiff with cold --
When funerary twilight season comes
To ***** the days. The final wren
Now senses slipping of the year, and so
Of tenant hill and glen deprived
Set in for sleep. If never to awake --
To never feel a verdant joy
Or exultation of the orb that breathes
Bright life into our skies -- at least
Released from hardships and her sorrows be.
But she has faith, she loves the sun!
The twinkling of his eye will come in May
Or else with April's gown he'll march:
Believing in her lover's rising light
The dream that takes her through the night.
Not far, a sickly naiad's wood
In seasons past so fair of face and leaf,
Yet creeping forest's yellowing
Like fingernails of corpse when skin recedes.
But then blush orange sanguinate:
The lover's sigh ignites when dies the vine,
Their bubbling veins in praise of life
When soonest to be severed by cruel scythe.

This phantom of their fate is grim,
More grim be sure than fate that falls in death:
The slings and arrows of the mind
Are those most potent poisoned, fear them not --
Illusory as winter's chill
That peels off maiden's wedding veil in spring:
A peaceful rest does come to all
Though private troubles drown the trees through fall.

Unthinking sleep does bliss the boughs,
In hibernation lose to learn anew
The sights proved true by waking world
That are the growing season's cause to feel.
When browns the brush and flies the thrush
Unanchored Daphne nods and starts to drift
In sea where beings dream as one.
Soft blizzard quilt on woods in slumber laid,
Demeter's daughter vanished into shade,
With knowledge that she'll never fade.

The crest of solemn ocean wave
So early breaks on windy beach
Where fairest Phoebus struggles sadly 'gainst
Triumphing clouds.
His horns, his blares to no avail:
Fall deaf on Egypt's Temple crushed to sand
To make this morning beach where sail
The looming gulls.
They hunger as they soar, their lonely cries
Are swept away by dawn's uncaring breeze.

That shore I wandered all alone,
Apart from you in restless dreams,
Disturbing sand-crab holes with stepping shoes
Sought lenses lost.
Possess'd of power to see without
Refinings of their frame, my need mere want,
I walked, a pool, and filled with doubt
That proud waves tossed.
Would sharpening vision truly help me find
That which I knew was only in my mind?

When then in heaven's light aloft
I spied a weightless patterned kite:
I called not to my glasses, but to Thoth
To aid my sight.
The soaring toy like silent hawk
Without the weight of sadness flew so light
Beneath the clouds now heard to talk
Instead of fight.
It seemed to catch a fleeting floating bliss
As pillars of the firmament it kissed.

The time was chill, the morning swift,
Where icy waves brow-beat the shore,
Impassioned blew the wind and kite did lift,
Yet hues endured.
What children tugged upon its string
Wishing to live capricious life, to soar,
Bemoaning birth neglecting wing
And all allure?
Yet came a haunting cry, in winds was clad,
Reminding me that still the seagull's sad.

I reach the crest of rocky fold
Beholding barnacles held fast,
Sea grasses over corals bare and cold,
And broken glass.
Sight has no sway of nature's spell:
I ponder Neptune's endless shoals
And whether glimpse of youths should tell
Me of their souls.
Can ever we catch sight of inner form
Reliant on the jelly of our eyes?

I turn to face my sandy steps,
Triumphant Phoebus clouds did rout,
I feel there's folly in my aided sight
So leave without.

She moves like she's one of the amorphous personalities painted somewhere
Along the angled framework of her body pattern:
Handcrafted with the vivacious energy inherent
In my far-seeing dreams the vision of a long-ago queen of the holiest swamps
Traversing them coldly, shining her starlight to dispel all my awful ugly nightmares.
Riding sidesaddle with the billows of morning
Hair wisped about by the wind and blowing watercolor across
The beautiful blooming valleys of her crescent-shaded eye frame.

And weaving out from the delicate anthers of slyly tangled lashes
Comes the glittering deep ribbons loosely noosed about me with suction,
And it turns out that I can survive for ever without food or water
From only one such glance.
Lost in that glassy prism container like an obedient insect, forced
To love himself because all his misfortunes are waved away and explained
By the invisible guiding lines raised in joy at each corner of her faintly blushing lip-land.

Well, Breath-Stealer, even if we can only meet softly now -
A vanishing semblance caught by cold air on our exhales perhaps - soon,
Our individual apparitions will flesh themselves out of the nowhere of time coincidences
And out thankful togetherness can coagulate like feather cracks in crystal:
Two human forms finally able to ignore the vase between them
Sooner than the closest oceans that wave to us,
And surer than sunrise.

Alas! The fair one has passed into the sea,
She has passed into the sea and never to return.
The silent rocks like sentinels watched her determined wade
Into the ocean unconsolable:
The ocean who beats her breast with every wave.
In days before when beauty was full-bloomed
There were none alive who saw aught else,
Who saw aught else but she.
Through her form they beheld the fronds unclench
And the first spry sproutings of jubilant berries red as sunrise.
It was her face that showed men theirs,
And pursuing her was lovestruck Time:
His passing spun the world at her behest.
All no more! She is gone!
The forests shall spend their days in winter
And ever in that dreamless part of sleep.
How was her departure missed
By those who loved her unto dying?
O Beauty, why barefoot march across the pondering ocean's bed?
Beyond her boundaries she was sought.
Over her, whole hordes of men have fought, fought and died:
Whole swathes of men so violently ended,
Their bodies drift like fallen leaves.
Over her shoulder so sad she gazed, with toes kissing the surf,
And the seastorm did rage at her passing.

So shy of the nettles but soft of the grass
The flower-sprite sighs and awakens like glass
That clears as it warms when it loses its frost,
She wakes all a-flutter and mourns for time lost.
Her long-dreaméd visions she pleads with to stay -
They vanish like vapor when night becomes day.
She rubs from her eyes twinkling sleep-seeds, and yawns,
And languidly stretches her diamond-dew'd fronds,
Embarking on errands of being awake:
The long sleep of winter in others to break.
The Rowan and Plum are the first to return
To greet their friend Pine, for companions he yearn'd
In long nights of winter when he kept his hair,
For Pine trees sleep not, and never go bare.
And then wakes the flower and then wakes the shrub,
And then wake the creatures, the mother and cub.
Slow pulses of life quick encircle the world
That flow from the magic of tendrils unfurled
By bell-flowered spirit, harbinger of spring -
She melts all the icicles and so tears bring
To nourish the saplings and all of the roots
That grow into strong trees and bear healthy fruits.
O Nymph as you draw back the wintery pall
I envy thy function and work not at all.
I do love the spring near as any who breathes -
The sweet-smelling nectar, the fast-growing wreathes -
But all this you've done and the sun's far from high:
He's barely set out on his sojourn of sky!
To wake at the crisp dawn of spring is not me,
The slow tide of dream seas is where I shall be,
So stir me not yet from this bed where I've lain
'Til roused I become by the sweet summer rain.

Thou stars who burnést sore unto our realm,
Why lay such laurels cruel about our ears
And hail misfortunes from the noxious clouds
To break our will? Was it not thou, thou star,
Who shone the speech of Delphi on Aegeus,
Shone likewise on his simple mind when fail'd
To find the veiléd seer's second truth?
In deed, by words son Theseus was wrought
And carried newborn from the grasping surf
In soft-eyed mother Aethra's arms, whose face
Like sprite, which King of Athens knew. The boy
Grew warm and noble, olive branch and fig
Did blossom at his fingertips and fall
When hunger or desire reared their heads.
'Twas time of peace when shone your sister stars
That hang in clouds of gas or nebulae
Far from the grasp of Dodekatheon.
Shall not benevolent stars keep kindling flame?
Young Theseus did sail away, some spark
Of thee caught in the sky when Athens rul'd
By silent father missing roaming son.
Long passed the years when Echo was sole friend:
Repugnant Stars who drool malignéd light
Wax'd strong in endless cloak of mother night,
Bestowing jinx and turn of luck on man
And all his ways. Long pass the years till home
He sails! The slayer of the minotaur!
Victorious and bathed in Pallas rays -
Neglectful to the shade of trecherous sails.
O father, father! Where was thy patience
So long control'd when rul'd the world of men?
Chanced she on silver winds and flew to sea?
Or swallowed by thy famished heart in grief?
Or was't the curse of evil stars that led
Thee to thy end? O, there are none who know.
Pay heed, thou stars, for still Aegeus fled
To coast, and from the stony precipice
Lay ancient eyes on blackest slaver's sails.
On oracle had he but thought again
The pain of murdered progeny be dulled
In falseness and in truth, and he'd have stayed
Still breathing on that windy cliff. And yet
The meddlesome magic of vexing doom
By constellation born caused tears in him
Who had birthed kingdoms into fiery being.
His sandles part from lip of cliff, he falls,
Belov'd of all the winds while through the air,
Until Poseiden's realm at last he finds
The greenest dream he ere had known. The reefs!
The fish! What sweetest realm is kissed by him
Beyond the veil! Those two great fathers meet
At last, both loving boy in ship above
Still goveren'd by the waning stars of hate
But sailing on till morning come.

, and affix me with your radiance
to count all six of my fingers
(including the plumpness of my toes as they grow
on wide-eyed weeping trees) in the land of lakes
where the mountains are smooth like butter.

you see,
baby,
my lifeline connects to the cracks of my eyes
now noticeably deeper
and when i hold you my hands are just points of view.
and when we cant think of anything to say
you
Know
that
the raindrops of heavy expanses
are strained in our exchanges.
so sing to me with your fragmented lips
before the individual peels split into birds
flying away,
with