An impish dweller of
sunless times, but a Guardian
of the monsoons within which
our thoughts raced as fast
as lightening did across the wet
patio tiles and those pouring black skies.

My brothers, they smelled
of grass blades,
of sun-ripened wheat.
But I smelled of barren
waterlogged dirt, sickly and twisted
with sour veins, but left flowering
a heavy rain-sodden smile.

Only now as I sulked
in years, ruminating,
fermenting,
I grew sullen.
Sapless and fruitless, I sought
the meaning of your touch and devotion.

For, I grew no roses,
sung no sweet scent,
sank spines and dried sympathies...
But you stopped
a moment,
And your cheeks
teased my petals with warmth
that rivalled any sun.

O’ watch for a spindly ****
of a boy, with freckles
scattered like ants! With
timid face splattered with sins
and grins alike, he’ll dance.
Round dawn and night he’ll go
till eyes grow wide with fog.

Down his belt swings, tight and old,
his laughs creep long like silver snakes
birthed from mountain spring.
Yes, this youth of sparrow-chatter
had naked apolline humor, though
quietly when morning spread past his reigns
Dionysian he was in bearer pinker treads.

O’ know him you may as the flitting
shadows that wrap your eyes in sleep,
But test his temper! Bleat and ba
and call him friend!
And know, as bushes are coloured
with flower and thorn,
no dream is sum nor ample
lacking the seventh young prince of discord.

Deep earthen roots, gold arrow-tips,
Sounding rush of green applause
Now, trees and bark stretch to
Higher lows of raptured skies.

Wide face of etched ranks and--
Here His marks tread and silence falls
Quite tenderly under winding timber,
Woodworks, Tree-rings, bound around
As clocks tick to celestial Grange's face.

His deeds show across baked-ancients
And those whose sun came creeping under
Horizontal terms and periods-- in lapses
when Time held his own--

On winding old branches with buds smelling
Young n' green n' poking free from yellow scars,
Time garnered his people, his children and dead,
housed them in ticks and tocks and surnames,
For Twilight's enamelled hubris to bathe them,
Wash them.

To set them in winding bark,
And brand them in Himself,
In Winding Tree-tocks.