.
Soft is the caul of breaths that seethe,
Loosed in the ears knowing
And light is held as a knife is sheathed,
Hard at the breaks reckoning.

Ebbing crawls in old cradles outset,
Clutched promises engulfing,
Death is a toll which gathers at sunset,
Ending seeps seaward in chills.

Listen for moon as it sails into lime,
Digging lost trails for journey,
Smell the salts as the sands run time,
Boarding penny barks turning.

Black birds soon flutter at drips window,
When dark winds cry crosslegged,
Lightless wings whisper— lit knowings,
Wraiths tapping three score and ten.
.

.
          1
Sometimes the body is contagion
To the soul.  Stars in their mission fall
To seed the fertile flesh, ignite
Blue waters of sulfureous hearts,
And so the flash is set to cancel
In the flood.  

          2
Sometimes the lip of soul onto seal
Will not hold, before he first knocked
And let flesh enter, thorny pegs
Pricked nerve and pierced bone on his climb
To the rose, yea, some stars odd as
Meteors crash.

          3
In the swan-sea, song-sangy-frame of crib,
Rough hewn words bent mold to scrape, like
Blasted coral, stood half-submerged
Amid sea and sky, for between the leaves,
Behind the eye, there are little stars
Shining like existence.

          4
In a circle world he fashioned green
Blazons about the darkling day,
Fostered by celestial navigation,
Wrote a language for music, on a map of love
And charted the force of green in a wind-
Rose of discovery.

          5
Sometimes the soul is not contained, it
Bursts in silent sound like well water
From the source.  And of men in streets
He saw the pennies in their grumble
Eyes, and of love and its course he rubbed,
Tickling dim stars.

          6
It was his thirty ninth year in that fall
To heaven when the steeping cell,
Refused to push in its tide.  Homeless
And free on scaffold of bone the middling
Man retracted from sun to sink
With the moon, turn-tiding-toward sea
Like a changeling.

          7
And as ever, nor often, unwavering eyes
Sprout through shifting grains.  And as he spoke
Quite rimless, Dylan Thomas was petrified
In undying light, and solid set within a rill
Of reef sparkling in concert betwixt gas
And sea, so becoming in purple sleeves,
This constellation of mute singers all,
Dried five-fingered-fish, bright embryos
Returned to the shell, they burn between the leaves,
Beset the grounded skies and show sprite flashes
In the dark where He has left his imprints, burning
Above and plastered below.  The first rock stars!
.

.
He wrote in the mornings, she recited to him at night,
He always made breakfast, she made dishes disappear,
His garb was quite frumpy, and hers, made of spun gold,
He struggled with fashion, song birds would dress her,
He thought his poems looked best in moving candlelight,
She made all the fires and lit candles with her eyes.
Once, he was embarrassed and said to her,
'How can you live like this with me in a hovel?'
She said it reminded her of Plato's Cave.
At readings he looked out and saw sinking eyes,
Now he has her read all his poems, it works
Wonders that way, and after-parties are strange,
Everyone keeps staring and asking for her
Name.  She gives cryptic answers and winks
At him.  The poet was running out of words
And thought his days with her were waning.
But she said her heart was kept in a precious
Box of symbols, of words, only he could write.  
She said that it was written in the sky, that poetry
Was dying and that he was the cure.  He told
Her that the stars were lost at night, and fading
While she sparkled unfailing, and many times
They tasted each others tears, many times
The world stopped spinning, he knew
It was her, she felt it was him.  To all
Others, their one bedroom flat was small,
Yet to them, it was the Palace Athene.
.

.
Some branches of broken horn
Called to me, as most others
Were rungs, the trunk, a great pole
For me to vault, into the heavens
Where was perched a wild nest
Of a Red-tailed hawk, at the top
I could see the great bird, once
Was there, upon his cloud throne
And all the woods and ripples
With the lake, in dear murmurings
Played for me to soundly hear
The waves lap onto the shores
Under my flight and the lighted
Breeze that sifted through needles
And the sap that patched me there
Out on the limbs of my swaying
Daze.  
          O to sail in the scented sun
Of the great old pine of tinted
Sage and black tall bark, to be
Nestled in the forests on high
Within its mystery and wisdom,
All the way up I rose, the journey
Earthward was so much harder.
.