.
Snow presses with a sorrowful squinch,

And white falls as the sudden snow falls,

We make our rounds in the growing dark,

Walking long the frosty eves with my love.

In my garden, feral and overgrown,
I bear with branchings of the apple,
Hunched and grey, laden with fallow
Fruits, the tired, knottted fingers die
Each year, under which are baubles
Of sourness and stray, poorly drawn
Circles of fodder even hungry deer
Will not graze upon.  The elder tree
Slowly casts itself into Bonsai stone.

Down a valley, in the grades of sun,
Lay a stand of madrones in redden
Fire, with deepest eyes of burnished
Green leaves, some immortal Gorgon
So beauteous, in form and branches
Divine, of Olympian flame, held, atop
Heavenly escarpments by the loving
Skies.  I see it for what it is, my love,
Your body and hair, so tawny, so fair,
Though, ever lost to me but in dream,
Are dearly those red branches, a fable,
Your eyes, green as sea, those leaves.

Peoples' will usurped,
Society victimized,
  .  .  .  All politics evil.

I will not die for you
Woman fey of flesh and home,
I linger but to see you unfrock
The holy, set rogues to roam.

Why should I thus be consumed
In breath like coldest fire?
Shape of rising waterfalls
That state, I surely do not desire

The downy *******, the runny skin,
Spark of cheek, notes of hair in shower,
The gliding step, the gusty tone,
Fools have died for much less a dower.

The lancing pools, the hemlock mien,
The highland sheen, the dawn-bird voice,
The Safire eye, over step of pyramid
Merlin gave Arthur a safer choice.

I will not drown for you,
Flood of hair, red as the lye
In parted Jordan, that sea, not me,
Shall pine as ever, slowly dying.

Your healing humors, your subtle sovereignty,
Your blood, noble as seven-seas are blue,
Little mirror who paints the sky,
Though nearly, I will not die for you.

Too beautiful for words,
My noble friends as they pass,
Songbirds in morning.

Rain dapples in fens of the marshland brooks,
Among the rue hillocks of the sapling woods,

What little peace may fall to drop the shivering
Leaves, rood of the sun, a crop, kestrels quiver

In midair, to keep as they sway into the stations
Of all minions moused who faulter in formation

And bright is birth, when night clothes the day,
As all the mornings long, song of hope, in May.

The tamed light describes
The counting of the moon,
It softly burns the white
Shadowed walls in my loft,
Foot falls sound in the cramp,
The dry creeks spell black,
The spinning clocks twine
As the river drains, staining
My pebbled rug.

                                 Sea birds
Cry from the other roofs’ top.
The muffled baying sound
Circles with the roiling fog,
A commotion of vapour swells
In my floating clouded minds
Eye, youth springs at night
And old age, ropes a dry well
In the merest morning.

Dimples on her face,
Walking long miles without her,
Pebble in my shoe.

The morning world in mist dissolves and under,
Towed to heaven, we, a plod below the death
Of clouds, sing mute, where they trumpet-glide
Flashing into peace.  Three-toed slabs, parched
Of orange, web the stars over the wine
Dark seas and chalk the churn and twining earth
Into gloaming.  In rapt stillness they,
Are import and income, parables,
Echoes of the innocent song sung to a spire,
Gilded hutches, to those who heap on brightness
Swans are brighter even more with blackest
Eyes, they pierce the silent shroud all starry.
I wish that we were like two swans my love,
Neck of nape, embracing without touch.

My thirty year friend,
In empty hall one cricket,
  .  .  .  My story to him.

Dark sound raven makes,
Chortles top fir tree, haunting—
Druids incantation.

My skin is ******—
John Moffatt, with scorpion chest,
  .  .  .  Reads with a mean wit.