.
When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world.  It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.

                              And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.

.
Coastal mist and mountains blue as ache—
Troubled waters in midair, streaming across
Such mirage of openness and tangled range,
When will the gathering skies sing me aloft?

( Sonnet )*

She came upon a meadow, then she undressed;
And when she was naked, the meadow blushed.

Softly she tread, floating above the clover
Seas.  Suddenly lost, bold honey bees forgot
The scent of flowers blooming.  Iridescent wings,
Humming birds, monarchs, dragons, flying in
Procession and the mushrooming dew now rising
Began to swell, raining upwards into the mystic
Blue heavens and the trees beyond that clearing
Stood longingly amazed, so green their spying
Gaze, when all the myriad flowers loosely fell
And all the gathering of colours faintly dimmed.

She came upon a meadow, then she undressed;
And when she was naked, the meadow blushed.

.
In November early, I planted a yew,
Stately, golden under Pagan moon,
It's fibers I laid into moist dark soil
And set her proudly in foggy shawl.

Needles sparking into everlasting air,
Green and gold under mantle of sun,
Wisdom staggered, grounded so fair,
Bark, red knowledge of salmons' run.

Before six moons had turned down,
Her needles fell out of limbs frozen,
By wind and rains *****, unclothed—
Sun-clad boughs now fodder to moon.

.
Greatest eagle, black and white,
Tell me how to reach the skies—
Wander with wind into the night,
Are you lost like me when you fly?
I see you marking the flaming sun
And want to follow your windy path,
Rising after moon, majestic one—
What trials of life in your aftermath?

.
What a work is man,
Forever building, lamenting,
Ruined temples in sand,
Foot stepping on the moon,
Sunning in tropical Cancún,
What stolid, myriad ways?
So many hands, numbing days,
Living ever fast, never heeding past,
Dressed to **** with a thirty round clip,
Formal, endangered—
Penguins in the desert.

.
The valley sleeps but I cannot, I sit upon a rock,
So weary from all my days of toil and thought,
The moon's light caresses you, mighty one—
River will soon carry me down, and you will rise.

.
In dusk a cloud moves,
Barely are there any stars
And the sheet drops, sinks,
As lovers we came to this
Gentle pond without guile
Under the willows green,
Set on the banks of whin,
In sight of a stone bridge
And settled in to watch
The swans arrive and go,
Like windy arcs of bounty
Under great falling blanket
Of indigo and gold sparkling,
Enameling eyes of the heavens.

Now, I come to visit alone,
Only memories gliding slow,
Love has fled near after song
The sweetest spring awakening,
How time unveils dark truths,
My hair, it falls in the wind
With the groping willows,
The godly eyes of the skies
Are now mere stars that flash,
My love is betrothed to another,
Still, the cool white swans at dusk
Ride in waters turned shallow, murky
And black as their eyes in day fall,
And yet they remain wondrous,
White rose of my soul,
Drifting away.

.
In the mercy caul of night,
Where time is frail as memory,
In the technicolor film of ocean salt,
With eyes of yearn and mute wonders,
There, I saw you once more.
We walked through the rushes green
Of warmth, broke into dreams dawning
Meadows of casting light, where winged
Creatures, colourful as we, lilting in midair
Spiraled, drifting through the gleaming
Thoroughfares of endless Mays, of tingle
And flame, where once before, we found
Ourselves at the misty plateaus reflection
Of star shine and flight, nary silhouetted,
Yet, framed in the snow melted tarns
Of golden, glorious, Olympus.

.
With wings at rest longer than its tail
My hobby waits.  Great bird of creation,
Where do you come from?  As I sit and mull
You take flight to and from places I may
Never know,
                            Where are you taking me,
Great spirit on high, far, farther-ring with light
And the wind, which streams then to delirium
Heights?  I am bled and I am torn.  Must I
Suffer in my soaring?  Your clutch, tings
The sky, pierce the cloud, my hobby hovers,
I dream of coronations, talons to my head—
A crown of thorns.

.
We are born,
There is some joy
Lighting a tiled room
And the first cry echoes
In the spray, sterile hollows.
A woman simpers, flush
And torn, whimpers, softly,
Under the phosphorescences
Of terror and delight, where
A man sees his own doom
Fast approaching as he weeps
With measured happiness
And one foot by the door.

Little creature, welcome
To the world, make up
Your presence known,
Bulbous and brightly
As melons in the sun,
Waiting to be plucked
With another lover
Indifferent as you,
Arbitrary as any name
Grasped for, looked up,
Placing you into this
Home of strangers,
This globe of shadow,
Shining dimly, eyeing,
To name you quick,
Holey, somewhat
Real.

.
Love is a flower open to the sun,
Hate is a cavern, a hole, craven,
Black, empty, a dank drowning,
Under light.  Love is one season,

Hate is transitory. Love is eternal,
Of vast nebulas, to outer reaches
In galaxy are nurseries with stars
Being born, light, alive with light.

Love is the lasting of conquerors,
The first line, defense, existence,
Love takes all in one communion,
Breaking the dark as the morning
Sun.  Love is conundrum, love IS.

Hate is a construct, the blotched
That bleeds where life is seeding,
Rot better to cut, spoil unneeded,
Hate will come to nothing, for life
Is love, love is all and everything.

.
How could I not— know . . .
See the noncut of soaring eyes,
Approach, moist, ****** and tidal,
Waves so searingly laden with tear,
Flame, forged in some mythic winter
Frozen as I was, before the rush of ice
And flows of glacier, I heard the loudest
Break of open silence in the seep and roar
Of depths' deepest, dark, coldest ocean waters,
  .  .  .  Before sweet suffocations of the very colour
White and saw the dim fates of fade, emergence of blue,
Hearts drowning.

.
Memories are shuttered —
In the out of doors closing,
For five eternal years we were,
Once married beside a church,
Beside a tomb.

And our hearts were simple, freed
Among the moss of grey stones,
Pebble beach and wayfare wishes
And wild doves seemed always
To be hovering.

And our only bed, growing ever
Cold as a cup of leftover wine —
We drank in sacramental prayers
Never uttered, never declared,
After all that was.

As it was after all, only —
A mere, makeshift dream.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite.”
― William Blake*

.
In this room
Drowning,
In ocean flesh,
Our days, replay,
With eyes cut
Out under sheet
Of stars.  All is
Not real, screened
For a soul, lost
On the dry lands
We bury ourselves
In.  

      One day we shall
Wake into the sun,
And bathe in the light
Of unbridled constellation
And voids deeper than
Life, holy and actual
Like drowning flesh,
Come, alive in sky,
Lit by eternal sheen,
Lost memories, grace,
Being burn, new sparkle,
Cast to air, as embers preen.

.
Winged caterpillar
That frees my soul,
Sets my mind to dreaming,
How the hand of man
Out plays the God,
Makes love
To its master.
With fondled fingers, you paint
A dumb firmament, the way
Light dazzles as it breaks
Or how the itching rain
Taps a teasing melody as it falls
To the lover ground.

Beloved of Orpheus
Whose wove you coiled in-
Vents a garment of bird song loom,
Content my breath
The way that water wells
And lolls into puddles
Nesting not before the hot,
Harpy steam.

O melodious pool,
Undulating lake, frame
To emotive vapours, without
Ship you ply in wakes.
The oarsman plucks the main,
Your body is the sail,
Drunkard winds and warblers,
Blow hard, but fail my ears,
Atone as well, the wretched sounds of day
For they are sour spells, and but a fools
Trash canned movements, in a state
So needy of weeding,
Mere sound is soiled
The way you rake.

Evolution spreads,
As stones do,
When moves the river bed,
Grace, in violence,
Sparkles as it blooms,
Like an ears creation—
Rose on the tomb.

( Sea Chanty )

When I was a youth, I spied a bird,
She filled my field with song,
And sadly it was, my duties began
But we made a vow singin,'
Together again!

    And a way'l we go, as I hurry the sea and—
    She waits the land.

My true love I call a nightingale,
And I myself a lark,
Together we make, two turtledoves,
And we made a vow singin,'
Together again!

    And a way'l we go, as I hurry the sea and—
    She waits the land.

    *O come will the day, that my true will say,
    When all my sporting is over,
    'Do you remember the days, I waited the land,
    And you hurried the sea?

Now, the sea is my girl and I her man,
I hear a lovers' lament,
An old seabird cries from the brighty main,
And I join with him singin,'
Together again!

    *O come will the day, that my true will say,
    'My heart, you've been the world over!'
    But until I rest free, I must hurry the sea and
    She waits the land.

.
We came to the wild beach
To picnic,
But the waves
Were breaking and rushing in,
The wind was gusty
And cold,
Was moaning a faint
Dirge.

In soft and plain
Footfalls,
Over the slide of sands
We made our way
Into the covering
Dunes.

The dull pressing sky,
The white gloved waves,
And sharp grasses,
The call of scything gulls,
All things were grey
And hovering
Dark and faded that day, but not as much
As the few, ordinary, words we spoke,
To each other
We cried,
To each other
When our tears dusted the sands,
We were saying
Goodbye.

.
Times tackle on the threads.
We beat the strand seahorse
Dashed, unfurl the curling
Toes, your body twists
In the boat, only ribs
From the spirit waters.  
Your fish fins from the net,
My rod pins on the pine
And the hooked meat, your barb,
Reels as it plays the swampy
Moan of the gutted bait.

.
Gray gathering  
Signs fell on the musty register.  Two pallid  
Faces infatuate, braiding the ley lines,
Were married in a dimly lit registry.
Outside, the sky in Dublin was a dark pool,  
The clouds were omen, birds, startled in  
Your eyes, a flashing flue of doves, all wings  
A warring coo, escaping into the dusk.

We walked a ways to that room of dreams
And dined in the Shelbourne’s Aisling room.
I was Ormond, I was Yeats and you  
Were gone. Your happy tears were notes singing
Our sorrows that day.  Our love was castaway  
Our love was time bomb.  Crossing stars, we trembled  
As we talked. Two birds setting sights on some  
Lost ocean’s horizon.  
  
                          When first we met,  
At the meeting hall, cradled in a tempest  
Eye, you gave me your name and it burned on  
The paper as it now burns in my mind  
Like Brigid’s fire.  At once, once, we were one.
Conjoined yet neither one of us a joiner.  
Anointed under the votive stars violently  
Innocent your heart, a spike, my heart  
A rail.  Our love was charmed, our love was time,  
Balm.  To what end this new beginning?

.
Startled ends, the consummation
Of hours, last days sparkle, begin,
I was made and I, was cast away,
Unsaved, born of oceans drowned
Pressures unwaved, unfounded
Yet strung alive, blood draining,
Torn inside and your voice, supple-
Clarion, your little hands roping mine
Subtle vines, tangled in unrest
Provisioned, sweet song, poison
Wined, what sorcerery, what shame
To forget ones grounded name,
To live, now only in shadow, sun
Only in shade where every room
Remains—
Empty, the golden light washed
Out in the seeping tides of ruin.
Though I was spent open, betrayed,
Always waiting, deaf hope listened
For deaths' floating midge of feathers
Drop, wish I never knew, never ran,
Came by you, never saw the mirrors
Ends, only wish for peace, day lights
Dull untold innocence.

.
Light rising—
Covers in a feathered sheet
As the news of bright birds,
Flash and colour, the palms
Of leaves, are beading with
Peaking sun.  I hear you stir
As I roll, so much language
In silences, so many hearts
In blended breaths, when
We are blanketed solely
In rich golden rays
Of birthing days
Dawning.

.
All the new flowers have gone.
I see flocks of birds flying away,
The waters, tear blue mountains,
Fall, rush and scold, are running
Cold— wind, whispers and goes,
Lonely as a tree without leaves.