Mourning doves landing,
Gentle branches— place for wings,
Hawk already there.

River stories told,
Marsh reeds, chapters of otters,
Fish tails left on rocks.

I have seen her playing
With light, edging her hair,
In crescents so fair.

I have watched her fingers
Twirl and twine, beaming gold,
Threshing precious hold.

I have witnessed the taming
Of the sun's rays, captured,
Spinning in rapture.

And I feel for the pale moon
Who offers his frail, vestige light,
While she sleeps at night.

Mourning doves at dusk,
Coo, harken what is to come,
Sun falls, new stars break.

I have known the stifling silence of all—
The world's cruel turning, the teasing dawn,
Breaking with fainting days, blinking out
Their dashing hopes, so much for rugs,

Pulled out.  I will not miss the slipping shade
That buried my name in Pharos fallow tomb,
Nor will I lament the times passing, raging,
Spectacle, the fallen masque of my fame.

I shall welcome the majesty of the ******
Loam, the honour of being the daisies mantle
The goodly fortune to sleep under the golden
Stars who birthed my dream of grace and light.

( for Síneánn )

Sound softly hung, she spoke, gave birth to place;
And there, found him closed in, frozen, shivering.
Her dawn light hands gently warmed his face;
His winter room sweetly broke into the spring.
After darkness died he felt strange bonds again;
Birds chimed, flew by, and the walls fell away.
Locked in her arms the turning world grew open;
His eyes nestled in the light her joy had made
And with her temperance swelled his weary eyes;
This was the day of her birth, Venus by the seas
And lonely air was steeping, the ground set aside
His tabled world was now a feral garden green.
In countenance with only grace she lies,
With mere touch turned his ceiling into sky.

He shuffles his muffled way through cardboard aisles,
Oblivious, sheltered, speaking in a mumble of tongues,
His piecemeal truths search for all that is meaningless,
Where he carves a gravestone—arguments in the rows.

.
In a swagger of swirl bones begin,
Bold artist looks back on kept time,
Fierce eyes fencing out from a pen,
So much soul reels unto scrim lines.

1
The chards rising.  Am I the praying bird?
In the gleaming sun my bones are negative,
My flesh a cypher walking through the plains
As ghost I move, my dark lord, above me
Flocks swirl and spike. I stand accused,
Your pointed face divining oblivion,
And no redemption in the rains of my
Cliff walk days.


2
I see my shroud pinning on the wires
His legs are razored forks spinning my
Compass from True North. Your dark brush-
Fire wings, the swept wind, wheels and strings
My fate. Such black rhetoric in a burn,
Your caws, loosed perches, on the stakes, picks
My crowning grave. Black dove, your feathers finger
As they slice.


3
Smoke, the cardinal blood caries my teething
Bone, spades my hand without a flight.
Taut, the pulled noose my hooded one
I see my scarecrow’s reflexion, the scar,
Let blood, the seeded droppings end trailed
To my door. Feathers, ferry to carry on
Dowsing downward, black knight of down, to sticks
On extended wings.

Abjure the bones broken in,
The first lift frissoned by
The moving trees slain on the shift,
Rivers and risen flowers cut,

My statuary lurches betide
The nap of bent wing saluting.

My aviary is a fluttering bed,
The scattered head REMs my flight,
My feet in cloud extend for landings
Tings the belled bound legging.

My falconer bows with pride
In the stall bent wings stooping.

My clawed creature glides for only
The pitching sun or shining moon
And my flights execution, the hooded
Head, end trails my falconer.

My days, fowl to the lunar kite,
Assail the winds open wound.

Sad modern poets,
Kneel to all that's irony—
Worthless as a stunt.

Lovers soon regretted,
Who had words in a dark field,
Black and low as crow.

Outside light is cold,
Sleet sousing naked branches,
Whole world shivering.