I look for Leo, his tawny dress,
His noble pride.  I see him ever,
In silent days his warmth his stride.  
Our friendship moved, grew a lease
With eyes sleepy, tempered, so wise,
Always serene.  How his waif voice
Would purrmurr, did chide and lift
Me from my human daze, my king
This spring is full of remembrances
And mornings that linger with mute
Vibrations and greetings.  How, now
I fear the carpets pressed unmoving
And times caress unsoothing.  I look
For you, with loving pause, and I cry.

Falcon rise— yellow racing eyes,
Blue wraith that rakes the skies,
Never has one fared such beauty,
Airs naught wholly bright as thee.

Is there a kneel for end of days—
Songs, deeds for those who prey?
Is there light breaking pied wings,
Or is heaven overlord to all things?

Sun spots feathering coated crest,
Talons top spires mountain breast,
When rivers of the wind fail all fowl,
What grace and splendour in a cowl?

Is there a psalm in the wailing winds,
A hymn that carries all innocent sins,
Or a fable, blue as stupendous skies,
A truest place where redemption lies?

The sea slides with lost ocean birds
And blue wings coast, row unheard,
Edging the skies with razors' tinge,
Seeding the immortal spark begins.

Falcon rise— yellow racing eyes,
Blue wraith that rakes the skies,
Never has one fared such beauty,
Naught airs wholly bright as thee.


                 — *after William Blake

Words, utter, deconstruct,
Pure truth is now, tainted.
Always two ways of seeing,
Right is mighty and written,
The blinking stars, warning,
Over heads of manly stone,
Silent testimony unheeded.
Faith, the hearts perdition,
The exquisite supplication,
The tyrants dream so freely
Spun for turning heads tips
As baubles do when moon
Is full or the sun is searing.
Is the world really flat? Are
The angels already among
Us or do birds surely winter
On the moon?

Poet to my eyes, you are the sight of whitecaps
On the sea water, or the sudden turn of a bird
In flight and as the wave I roll and break,
With drowning wings that lift toward you, my sky.

Mistress to my soul, I am the nave of your holy
Cathedral.  My head is but an occluded riff,
De-noting songs you make in aisling airs of light
Polyphony, my star over-sings the windy globe,

She swallows heaven, like swallows blacken the dusk.
Shearwater bird, strip my surface with your cutting
Wings.  My waves peak to reach you starling girl.

The sloughing chill of winter dies quick in sighs
Waft asunder my little Indian summer, wake me
From sleep and I shall dream but once for your kiss.

Time is teasing along with lush earth so pleasing,
The minutes of our youth are spent in toiled days
And sands are blowing the weld of our sold means,
Foundations of dust, the cries unheard, of the aged.

And then, as dream, you came from the starry skies
Blue and small as the ocean dot, forever fixed—
Reigning over the frozen, revolving moon that lies,
Dimly wakes in your fabled orbit, my fated ellipse.

Now, time tables and splits, renders me to eaves
Undone, my squandered youth was but a sad play
And I am clocked with wind, the geld of my dreams,
Had shiftless hands been more solid than my days.

If only she would die with me—
Lying a bed on a sheet of stars,
Out of mere dark, our light set free,

Our leaves to hold in rings of tree,
Hair entwined in ocean days hour,
If only she would die with me—

In the forest fern to rest, wake curly,
We would nest in that place so far,
Out of mere dark, our light set free,

To ever knotch a simple tapestry,
Colours even sun could not mar,
If only she would die with me—

In this morning all spark wants to be,
What our bodies are joined in marking,                      
Out of mere dark, our light set free,

We two have eyes blistering to see
And winds that tail the song of larks,
If only she would die with me—
Out of mere dark, dear light set free.

Veined wings fell when I died,
Fell in mid flight on one last
May Day, on fire with the sun—
Only the dust knew me there,
It fell so gracefully with me.

A downy feather, once was—
Dropped from on high, before
A great white falcon turned the air,
Even thought to prey or of stooping,
Of noble birth was I, falling earthward.

One dry— red, pine needle fell,
Lost in thick piney bed of so many
Others strewn on the forgotten said,
The wind as it unceremoniously fled
And now no path was leading there.

At one grassy edge of a ******—
Bay some gravel clay gave way
To form a place where water, airy,
Lolls and eddies into tiny whirlpools
This was all the dance of my days,

Only the dusk knew me there—
And the unobserved eclipse going
Through all its phases and a forest
Fired, under clovers without bees,
Veined wings— fell when I died.

.
Veined wings fell when I died,
Fell in mid flight on one last
May Day, on fire with the sun—
Only the dust knew me there,
It fell so gracefully with me.

A downy feather, once was—
Dropped from on high, before
A great white falcon turned the air,
Even thought to prey or of stooping,
Of noble birth was I, falling earthward.

One dry— red, pine needle fell,
Lost in thick piney bed of so many
Others strewn on the forgotten said,
The wind as it unceremoniously fled
And now no path was leading there.

At one grassy edge of a ******—
Bay some gravel clay gave way
To form a place where water, airy,
Lolls and eddies into tiny whirlpools
This was all the dance of my days,

Only the dusk knew me there—
And the unobserved eclipse going
Through all its phases and a forest
Fired, under clovers without bees,
Veined wings— fell when I died.

At the end of night she bathes in light,
We tussle in the warmth of morning,
The blankets and she are of sea foam
And found shells, whispering lost ocean
Words.  Our bed is a raft, drifting aloft,
The coffee is brewing with mellow sun,
Her smiles, filling my silly, giddy mug.
Soon, we walk to the pebbled beach,
Her hair is waving at the friendly seas,
Gulls are circling in the moving skies
Reeling with the slow, slipping tides
And I skip stones with her as our feet
Sink in the milk of morning sands—
Must we be off to Dublin town?

I hear echoes that have no voice,
Sad before the vaulted tongues
Over brimmed, who spill on shunted ears
The sour milk of pressed pictures
And sooted lights of lime
And the golden knobs taste
Jarring-dry to their saw dust toes.
Must the babe be chosen
By its mother?

The sea dirt is lined with woolen shawls
And the chasm shout shall dig our graves,
Throated hollow, to the abyss, we sink our six
And ***** the dirt, call not them the spades.

I hear echoes that have no choice,
But to skim the moated land
And wash well eyes with leaven walls
That tease and **** the sum to crushing
Columns lifted shoulder
High by zeros of kneeling numbers
Worming in bedded slumber.
Must the maker of builders
Be dismantled?

*The sea dirt is lined with woolen shawls
And the chasm shout shall dig our graves,
Throated hollow, to the abyss, we sink our six
And ***** the dirt, call not them the spades.

impatient for your arms again i rise
to sit and watch your secret sleeping eyes
what dream is this that keeps you lingering there
with smiling parted lips and tender sighs

what joy in sleep fills your so captured heart
while i wait here alone, to watch apart
and gaze upon your much loved gentle face
more lovely than a work of perfect art

i wander in the garden late at night
to gather perfumed roses, pink and white,
while I my patient lovers vigil keep
to bring your morning wonder and delight

the dark, the stars, the moon are gone away
across your sleepy pillow sunbeams play
in this new world refreshed, renewed, be mine
awaken to another golden day

The Blue Falcon, cross the spire,
Waits in the gables of the white
House.  Wounded in youth by crush
Of air, spent, a wisp perched
In the aerie dark with a view of mountains
Blue as ice under glacier.  The wooden
Church from the other side clutches
The sky but the Falcon blue is lost
In a tuft of cloud that bobs but never
Kills.  On this strike he is sheathed in stealth
The dull talons slip as they dry
In the tented air, the songbirds at play
In the high-ground underneath warble
And chide but the Falcon cannot hear
The Falcon near.  His heart is soft
And muted in the breast, his ears
Are dumb to their tickling-songs.  

Before the Falcons time, over
The tilling fields, dropped his world
In the spoils where splendour burst in green,
Rain meant the feathers ran and the woods,
A banquet of game, were bounty's breach
Fording blue currents he was
A fisher in the sun, but the sun
Sank in his drowning sky no store
From plateau to quarry the drought of days
Moved a castle felled in the dancing
Dust, his wings broke in the shuttered
Eye of the sun and etched his form
Into grey silhouette.  

Now, the Blue Falcon, jeered
In the branches of the rooted air
Above the yellowed grass, under the pines
And a great blue mountain, stirs a Druid
Shape, vaporous, in the cauldron
Of the attic in the white house
A throw of stones crossways from
The sacred yews of the steeple spire.