Dear Pablo, as I look over
my soaking body, wet, with patches
of dirt, blotched and raw bleeding,
the clouds turn in my yellowed eyes
in order to love you, my Pablo.  
You, who made me feel radiant.  
As I am the sea,  I fish for you,
rolling in mud, and becoming
mountain, I topple for your toes
who'd dig in deep and itch my aching

breast to sleep.  My dreamful-drowsy
birds, rake the skies, rush-out like nets
wanting you on their wings, my poem.
Pablo, I loved you so when you said,
my flowers were little stars to pick,
and that loneliness was a train who waits
in a far-away station, and how, my most
minuscule attributes — a cat, a pear,
the atom, you praised, in odes, heaped
like showers hailed from heaven, as fresh-

water you reigned from the other side
of tears, and temper'd my salt, my green,
murky life.  Dearest Pablo, since you've gone,
my breath has the emptiness that hides under
stone.  And the blue-winds crossing, my life-
less age, they are nothing but long waves,
keening,   —  Nay   —  rood   —   ahhh!
Since you have left me.  And my trees,
they forget how to grow,
my song, my only,
Pablo.

You are song,
Rain dropping on still pond.
You are sky,
I see Heaven in your eyes.
Your are peace,
A garden above the world.
Your are grace,
The gentle path of the swan.
You are knowing,
The wind that whispers alone.
You are star shine,
The dust that lights the plains.
You are vast ocean,
Mother to the Fathering atmosphere.
You are dancing light  .  .  .

In youth, to myself I thought,
'Is true love bound in some far away place?'
I flew off— picturing dreams to be had.
Ah, so much in books and on film I saw
And so I settled my gaze,
Westward to love.

And I met a girl who knew,
Trades of skin which came and quickly fell,
Of longings true it was not to be had.
Ah, so much in books and on film I saw,
So I left her one glad day,
For we did not love.

O love, so nebulous a thing,
Windings on wheels, windy fates command,
If I could but contain her starry light,
In a wrapped box of hopes, still, on reels,
Recorded in books, in films— fables,
Ah, such an album I would dream.

Then came my only, true one,
The coolest rains held in longest summer,
But soon even bliss in a shower ends
And words to eyes but stories— whims.
Ah, so many pictures I made,
In a camera without film.

And dreaming of Inisfáil, I was raised on Bolivar Pond.
Sheltered in my wake, I’d coo as the dewy’d morning dove
   And fern in my bed, I rose to greet
       The song-splayed sounds of light
   And work, I made it dropping slow
Bright in the summers swoon, I was adorned in forest eves
By rings that rang from tree to rook, and flung the wingèd down,
       Brambled in bay, garland in violet
   When blades could ***** and not make bleed,

And I was brindled by the moon’d many shades, that liken
To a brook, and mottled in my main, noted among moss
   In that glow, once knighted we must serve
       Wood, let me comb in peace!
Colored in the mantled cloth of leaves
And bonny and red, I was the brave and the boon, the deer-
Ants learned me, and herons stood muck, on stands spearing all mite
       And the vernal song sang lowly
   Swaddled in azure’s unfolding dream.

At each turn was a season, nascent life charming in marsh
Forays that brimmed the hollow rood, in clover yards, I saw
   The lilt of bees, sallied in clearings
       Brown as the yellowed beech
   Colored in sounds that beat the heart.
And forth into the field I sprang unto that shedded loam
And high was the sail that bellowed the raft that raked my pond,
       Bullied by the har-umph of frogs
   I rippled, rowing cat o’nine tailed tunes.

Windy and free in the hollowed bark round the ****** bay
I trailed the bear sniffing ****, heard the hoo of a swooping vowel
   And wild in hare, dug the fox-hole up!
       Damp fires hailed the rising
   Moon, as fire-flies dinted the troutling pools
And nothing I saw in my drowning sun could nettle or thorn
My piney ways, nothing could rot my wood-craving ears
       For the kestrel’s qweet-a-quee rang holy
   In the skunk-flowered fields of Bolivar Pond.

.
Was there a word,
Plain or shimmering,
Cast of gold and mercy,
In the bathing light of forgiveness,
Tempered with down and feather,
Wrought of worthiness and pride,
The mellow flame of tenderness
And shearing morning sun,
One tabulation of saving flesh,
The tapping root of the knowledge
Tree, the forge of stainless metal
And touch, stone direction,
One healing humour, cardinal
As blood, forceful as the salt
Journey bearing the pines
Of lodestar coordinates,
Spotting the Xanadu ex
Of the lost lovers?

In the sands now,
The castles crumble,
You are salted, breaded
Of eternity and old song how
Under the mute whine of stars
Sings a lost melody all shall
Soon enough join in corals,
The dive into the stretches
Beyond strands and untoward
What light there surely may come,
Beckon, like recurring dreams
Of fathoms yet to be discovered,
The rivers of time have slipped
You by, here riding now in tides
And driftwood under stars, sails
Moving by masted spars' rowing,
Your rude cross, commemorating,
All that was dearest, too soon lost,
The ferried bones to sea from sky.

.
In forgotten places
She made our bed,
Draped with golden
Sun and shade only,
Longing lovers name
As they stalk shyly, shines
Of trailings, low happinesses
That others delve seemingly
Deep and joyous always into
Graces left everlasting for them.

In forgotten places, of hurt,
We made our streaming supper.
By a bank that only salmon traverse,
Knowing with hazel branch and leaves
Buried round ancient moss of circle stones
This was our testament, the tame grasping
Of light as it flickers in a whirling of whim,
The hot breath which knows coping hope
Has no end in beginnings, the lancings
Of eyes as they tear into faint mystery,
Lamb white and bleeding, sacrificial
In the dawn, trained to never want.

.
In the dreamlands of sun,
He streams the invisible rivers
Of lit glories to come,

Careens, lording the beams,
Airs, above the ordinary
Grasses that dry in the gleams,

With eyes that wash over kills,
The forking fowl and mealy vole,
Hare in the runaway hills,

High above the fourth wall, stead-
Fast, stately in his dress,
To commencements of death,

Where eagle strikes with talon,
Crescent as day moon,
Sudden, silent to the cast fallen.

.
Grafted birds in uproar—
And grey moorlands a fog,
The cacophony of orders,
Even turned earth a slog.

Highest heavens, all one,
Seeing with truthful eyes,
Black and white eagle—
Clarifying the blue skies.

.
Sweet flower, all the meadows creatures
Are dancing, giddy in their bustle ways
And even the wild cherry has petals laid.
How do they all know that we are in love?

.
Teems in the whirling grasses,
Fire in the daisies, littlest suns
Becoming patchworks of stars
Above the hallowed loams of soil,
The black ants shine in the light,
Spiders construct their silk laces,
Line by line as the wind unweaves
In the crepes, even in round dew,
One can see the globe of waters,
Watching itself in minnows' eye,
The insects, fly, iridescent gods
Floating sparkles, burst, buzzing
Wings, the stems of green ferals
Flowers flagging them into grace,
With chalice, tasting cup in blood
Of the petals, to thirst and quench
Ambrosial nectar, freshness, new,
Sweet in the tendril vines embrace,
The songs of colours, lowly birds,
Even higher, sing, above, choirs
Of the knarled and ancient twig
Branches that flame into briars
With leaves of yellow, feathers
So fair, water cresses in pools
Of the meadow and the violets
And buttercups spun, painted
With splattered, arts, confetti
Whirl, world in meadow sun.

.
Downy in a bed of cotton clouds—
Faraway under seas of coral and wave,
The maritimes of fair and lonely currents
Cast us away and dropped our weary souls
On a lost strand of some great ocean landing,
Circe appeared, was knowing, to greet us as we
Woke, led us to a citadel island above of the sky,
We dranked of thirst, her fey sweet potions in haste,
Made our way in flight to kiss misadventures escape
And mired in woods fell once again, innocent before
The dawning break of a greenly seeded eternal day,
Blue eyes born, became, in the spotted branches,
Freckled arms and barks of ever reaching hair
Praised in silence and timely mystic wanes
Quivered in peace like a yearling doe
As never leaves were blanketing
And the moon sang with toe,
Our eyes sank lowly, softly,
Only to spark upon tides
Of the glittering pools
With starry eyes
Glowing new
In lovelight
Of dear
Sun.

Frozen in rains, cloistering,
So severe in the dark of day,
Is the walled clutch of garden,
No one escapes, a gilded reaper,
Born of fears, promises beyond,
Of joys on the oak nailed pews.

Above the lost naves, who stand
In worship to a ghost, bones bent,
There are cast arches of old sorrows,
Veiling the lighted eyes of the cosmos,
Shutting out even mercies, heavenly
Lights duly smoked of incense.

And slated roof, so statuary cold,
Of aged rock and moss under spire,
That even the doves, as they coo
Are grounded, up muted hollows,
Chimes that merely echo guilts,
By shadows of faithless pride.

Light sparkles in the clover,
Yellow and blurr of bees
Are honeyed in the sun
And robins have come,
Yanking in the gasses,
So green is the moisten
Of the painting of the dew
And all is lolling in petrichor,
The soils running with slow
Time so shortly experienced,
Oils of wood permeate the air,
Lapping brooks bream into light,
The loft kestrel swirls in meadow
And chipmunks scuttle at base of tree,
Even the wind does freshly quiet, crisply,
There as a hug waiting for body and spirit,
Patches of white are disappearing, they know—
That one day we must all return, after winter snows.

If there is hint of blue note— it is contrived.
If there is semiprecious structure it is all by rote.
Because there is mastery — there is no mystery.

Adroit hands show only gloss and felicities death.
Surprise is supposed in the onslaught of notes.
How sad are the fingers that smooth them over.

The scales are mere trapeze and not a razors edge.
Your instrument is placation as your feel is dead.
Hurrah when you finish— no one hand is clapping,
The hill is climbed, but the great mountain is laughing.

The hills beneath him stretched out like the curves of women.  Bent
to the clouds he fell from the earth which geared him prickly as would
a range of *******, then soaring higher, he dived, topping valleys
reshaped downy now into ridges slowly writhed before catching
under toe his own dazzled stare on a water loch of milk and coal-
haired body strewn out to her lily'd bones and still falling, he dropped
to the break of morn dribbling wet sand from his eyes and woke
in the sparring light of his least favourite day.
        In a grainish and utter room, where hanged more than two
pictures of two people, he sank down to Sunday diminished in sighs
from the four tilting walls and blew dead inward unfolding a book.
As he reached for some volume, a baby finger nicked the hair string
of his guitar and for a moment was reminded of her voice in the bedded
vibrations.  Looking on her curves he felt the soft nape of her neck
with his eyes, then those same eyes unhanded her and she, his
dejected guitar, faced him unsung in the cornered glare of his boxed
in room.  He felt frost in throes all that morning and sideways out
of doors— the sun looked back on him even colder.  It would be hours
now until the end of days, so after lunch he went for a walk and a bird
sang nearly the whole way.

  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

It was much warmer than he had fared it to be outside and having wrestled
with this idea, that the day was somehow harder than his soft, flat room,
the mere remembering was rote by him to his pangs.  He turned, thinking
toward other things, like the void of driven streets or the mimicking cruelty
of shadows, until he saw a sullen field and left the road to dust.  He knew
that if lost, walking through the lofted hills, he would end up in the ocean
so he headed higher to the crest and over then saw a stand of trees.
        And facing the water that rilled on its way, in the tall grasses he saw
patches of red, flying with the black birds and his heart, in a boat of swells,
traveled like the red patches those birds carried.  Snowed on alder trees
brushed by him, but the wind was blowing in from the west and there
were beautiful things to behold.  A red-tailed hawk striped the ceiling
of his day by the sea and built an island to his eye and then his head sank
droning into a syndrome of birds as he joined in silence with them all
singing;
        'ta— hee— tae.'      
        Showers of poppies spilled to his heel and the keel-brew of rushes and
rain tasted purple on its way perning to the sky.  At one stop in the middle of his
path, he came upon a purfled coil, a briar snake, its body shaped in question,
unmoved and long.  The dark Orphic frieze, branding his way, it would not
listen, as if she had always been there, deaf to his song.  He felt the loss
of love by echoes from his room in the out of doors.  The drumming trunks,
the stringing leaves harping and the water that gurgled by stones into poems.
A Northerly blew begrudging the trunks, the leaves and the stones and by
the woods sinking taller he felt rushes of time running as breath through
gusty trees and felt chimes of things flying buttery like feathers to a bell.

    .  .  .  .  .  .  .

        But at the deeper woods opening he lost his way and became fearful,
not wanting to enter.  The tallest ones, red giants with faces of evergreen
canceled out the closing sky and so he changed his way back as before
to the rounded hills.  And weary from his climb he rested on the back of her
body in lands overlooking down from the brae he saw the ocean swelling
and the stars being born in wild flowers as the hills at dusk were dissolving.
        After two eternal moments in peace, he rose again in the Highlands,
to the braise and harvest smell of musted hay, cottage chalk and bleating
wool.  Now holding the girl draped in tartan, this time without caring he fell
into the black woods of her mien.  And the milk of her body dripped out into
his and slid back waveishly until she was all hair from black becoming straw
in their bed and feathers when the raven appeared.  And the flooding waned
when she flew through an opening unraveled in the thatching roof, shredded
above the funny moors.
        In seconds he was swiped clear, before the shy song lamenting when
the doors, by tidal weathers, blasted open into the mackerel sky, gathering
too like vapours with the dawn, he wafted up, swept away into the airs
on Highland shoals.  Now sailing above the speckled clouds in a darting
school of other drifters, he heard himself singing in heights of sways
throughout the tangle of wandering bark that stretched by branching coral
midway to the moon.  A great oak tree made of lime pierced the end of blue,
nadir to its zenith and into the heavens all starry.  And ringing its trunk was
a line drawn of which beneath lay the drowning world.  It was as if each layer
were one part oil, the other part water.  Looking down, way, way down
and down even farther, he saw the running seeds of striped minnows
who swam by up-streaming a wide river.  To catch up he dropped, again,
all dressed in the colours of rain, with those gladly miners.  But they swam
above the river between the rounded hills.  And the waters ran runny, now
unwrinkling as does the bowl that holds the Milky Way, when someone
dappled by in whisper saying,
        "Come with us twice the road is easy!"
"Where are we?" To himself he mused, as she blew away and by, like a long
dragon flying.  He let his body to sink with the weeds and sedges he saw,
to a beam held with barely a nail hanging, the age old sign set, spiriting him
back again to his place.  Back to the point that draws itself, as does the wind
that winds through the rushing reeds, back to the sun rising note after moon
underwater and from such still sounds was he a reel, just when the post
that was always sheering spoke out and said;
"Welcome!  .  .  .  "
        "Welcome to Minerva."