Downy in a bed of cotton clouds—
Faraway under seas of coral and wave,
The maritimes of fair and lonely currents
Cast us away and dropped our weary souls
On a lost strand of some great ocean landing,
Circe appeared, was knowing, to greet us as we
Woke, led us to a citadel island above of the sky,
We dranked of thirst, her fey sweet potions in haste,
Made our way in flight to kiss misadventures escape
And mired in woods fell once again, innocent before
The dawning break of a greenly seeded eternal day,
Blue eyes born, became, in the spotted branches,
Freckled arms and barks of ever reaching hair
Praised in silence and timely mystic wanes
Quivered in peace like a yearling doe
As never leaves were blanketing
And the moon sang with toe,
Our eyes sank lowly, softly,
Only to spark upon tides
Of the glittering pools
With starry eyes
Glowing new
In the light
Of dear
Sun.

We stalked and ran with endless time,
Knee deep in rains of muck, grew lost
In tails of the always new, overreached
By trammeled spots, dotting, red wings
From black birds, knobby toads, garter
Snakes that shocked, marigold swamp
And we bolted above ruddy moccasins,
As ever wet, holey, dying for new days,
Gleaming in the swelters of the horse-
Fly sun, in the giants' grasses, we were
Heroes by the falls of light, glow, dusky
Bold, joys travail and dewy eyes echoed
With sprite flashes by the flies that fired.
And all our conquests— writ in the wind.

Tired, I awoke upon a lonely island beach
And gazed on a Goddess above the shore,
With sea foam hair, coral skin, what dream,
My salt eyes, blinded, open, wanting more,

Conspiring with rays of summer she shone
So bright, this daughter of the sun, we stood
I and my castaway crew, to that siren prone
As she led us to her mansion in the woods.

Her potions tamed the forest wolf and lion,
Spellbinding warrior poets to liven feasts.
Why then must she turn ***** men to swine,
By what she most desired contented least?

Desert falcon, my moly held Pharaohs' breeze
And what nil escape above the wine dark seas.

— for Seamus Heaney*

Forging scaffold and wells of tongue,
Whose every word— rung to the stars,
One sprite, born a new heart to Ulster,
Tanged in sounds of the beating sparkle,
Now the leftover sun, a light in absence,
Falls with leaves of the turning autumn,
Tears, sloping, in a feathered arc, so fair,
Splitting to the shores of a western isle.

Her languid voice
Drew me in, drooped,
And tentacle hair wrapping,
My feet fell before hers,
Sinking in the faraway lost pool,
The mortality in the sands,
And even the stars, snuffed
Out of darkness and fire
Became the light of the world,
The hushed day breaking
With welling waters and salt.
How can dream be lived,
Within dream?  Must I swear
As I fall into bliss?

Blooms of hair, shimmers and starlight,
Face of dream, gathers in lighted loom,
Wakes of morn, spotty forest fawn, child
To magi moon, maid of golden orchards,
Of faraway seas, world opened vastness,
Temptress of foreign fruits and the giving
Sun, where blue, blood oranges old, ripen,
The dark vines grape of ancient olive, red
Lamb and wine.

What enchanted lands are you made of?
Where the diving seas of dolphin, sponge
And whirlpool weave, wherein Gods must
Have loved and making you, left this earth
In beauty and peace, burnished with dream.

She sprung complete into being,
With all aspects of new flowers—
Short time became a ruthless scene,
And all the world a fleet of shower.

Rising guano smokes the white birds.
The North winds homing, ave, a long
Besieging sea and ferries the prince
Of waves pass pacific and the fair isles.
With javelin eyes, aloft, blue streaks

The seething air, headlands draft
Grave embattlements, red rivulets
Paint on the raining wing, black art
Ticks the tern, marked minions and more
Dread.  Once you were a foundling

Dropped from sovereign doons, scree
Of sky, air of wizard, your image late
Spikes from the lake, taut talons train,
Your breast a speckled main, rapier
Of dreams, arisen, sheathed in stone.

In the frosts of autumn, leaves do tell
In storied colours, yellow and red,
Round the shores your kingdoms table,
Battle cries break, a silence of wails,
Though they fall they shall burn again.

.
Eyes, orb as exploding stars,
Weighted light of hair rushing,
Held extremities, nimbus limbs,
Eons' spring, singularity crushing.

Her fine hands are gentle
With lithe and spiny fingers
Of bone and fin.

Her eyes are opal,
Essence of emerald and topaz,
A hoard of treasure.

Her hair is sea gathering
And dances in the blue currents
Deadly as the sea snake.

Her skin is coral,
Made of mineral and sorcery,
A fatal beacon.

Her lips are urchin,
Set in a whirlpool of face,
A spiral of doom.

Her voice is dream,
Rocking the lost wrecked ships,
Ground into sand.

Her long tail is fable
Of paradise, beyond faraway seas,
Cyclones and waves.

Red was the colour of her hair,
The colour of blood in a bed,
The pastels of lovers burnished
By an indifferent, waning sun.
The mark of my own undoing,
The fey burning in my veins.

Blue is the colour of mirage,
The marriage of the naked oceans
And of the non cloths of the skies,
Blue is the blast of bold dream,
Of the future and of the past
The innocence in her eyes.

White was the colour of her
Soul, her skin, the brash divinity
Within, without, removed, set
And vibrating like swirls, flash,
Particles, parsed, dark matters
In superpositions of quantum flux.

He walks in stolid darknesses
At days zenith, hears whispers
In the dew dusted fens, lights
Leaves into sun candle flames,
Drew a lake sword by maidens
Hand, alchemic shaper of water,
Air, old fires and earth, bending
Cold elements of moly and lode
Rushing forth, in extra emotions.