.
We drove to wild poppy fields,
Lost and open under the sun,
To picnic in solemn, spent wonder,
And celebrate new found love.

Gentle rain came blowing in—
The sky painted a clouded mood,
And old mist rose in lighted heat
A gentle sheet of covering dark.

We then broke down to take leave,
Our lent time was now dead—
There under the cathedral of sun,
Our love smoked in poppyhead.

.
I remember— we loved,
In stone cottage of hours
And the birds sang so high
To eternals of new sunrise,
You were everlasted, eyed,
My beauty, ageless, in kind,
I was purely anythings thus
As we once lived in a future
Of days light, a wonderment
More than always, devoted,
Yours and mine in entwined
Direction, the flanged arrow
Of time as it thrusts, freely,
Only forwards belonging,
Where, in the our future,
There is remembering.

.
Her languid voice
Drew me in, drooped,
And tentacle hair wrapping,
My feet fell before hers,
Sinking in the faraway lost pool,
The mortality in the sands,
And even the stars, snuffed
Out of darkness and fire
Became the light of the world,
The hushed day breaking
With welling waters and salt.
How can dream be lived,
Within dream?  Must I swear
As I fall into bliss?

( Sonnet )*

Good deer are gracing the trees,
Take communion in handed leaf,
Touch the soils with loving hoof,
In the tabernacles of the wood.

The owl cries for all souls eternal,
Deep in the shrouds of the vernal
That drape the newly born dying,
Beneath the solemn owls' crying.

And songbird has a psalm unread,
A parable in the twining branches,
Gifts of song foist lanyards of crop
Dear in old forest, this offered sup.

As blood seeping deep in the wood,
Sky washes away those who stood.

.
The whole world is a sea—
A great ball of green blue eye
Watching the skies with a watery
Gleam in the round and swirling
Aye, the sea is a sauce, quivering
In the bowl of heaven and clouds
Are blushing with rivers run flushing
Waters older than the gold of stars,
Into the sea.  I see that hushed time
Is flowing as it all revolves with tides
And birds, white as snow and foams
Pure as dreamed downy wind, wings
Long, sure, set for a choppy pilgrim's
Sea journey, swaying with the stages,
Always breezy, sliding as fish do flying
In her rounding depths and her gusty
Crests and all are riddled as mariners
Who travel on her spindrift ways, days
Of the dizzying sun and steamy springs,
We all go step into deepest end, darkling
Fathoms of slip, those eventual afterwhens,
Riding the sunk, fabled under-ocean streams,
In mangled kelps of weeds, into the murky wave.

— for Seamus Heaney*

Forging scaffold and wells of tongue,
Whose every word— rung to the stars,
One sprite, born a new heart to Ulster,
Tanged in sounds of the beating sparkle,
Now the leftover sun, a light in absence,
Falls with leaves of the turning autumn,
Tears, sloping, in a feathered arc, so fair,
Splitting to the shores of a western isle.

Blue veins that pace from on high
Or saunter, streaming in a drowsy
Way, day napping light into ocean
Sleep, carousing with slides of time
And dearest travelers to keep—
Where do you come from?
What is your source, a holy well
Or mountain tarn, the fallen cloud,
The rising waters that bursting sun
So ordains, what the wistful, traveling
Birds are want to herald by all thy names
As they speak from above on spry wings?
In my final day shall I know such peace
That your drifting lay delivers?  Or shall
The moon unface me as I dive into
Lost cloaks of the eternal oceans?
River, my final driver, take me on
Those pathways to the seas,
With open eyes welcoming
Under the lacing lakes,
Of greatest garment,
The bedding nights
Of gentle stars.

.
A trail or a town,
Under cloud,
Above the moon
Peopled eyes once saw
Each every hair,
Left over feet,
When children spoke
Windy with the sun,
Birds sail down
And the ocean moves
Closer than any heart
Left on a beach.

When if it was
Any town small
As a mountain stream,
Would the earth
Even rise to claim
A penny in a pool?
Would a budding tree
Launch its way beyond
The waves of grass
Or in rays of nettle bed
To thread a yarn?  Aye,
When if it was.

.
In straps, of wire saplings,
Becomes one wild rose.
Alone in the dawn,
A solitary crow knows
That this is beauty,
Greater than his own
Shiny black robe.
Impossibly regal
Red as a scarlet wail,
A siren, amongst all
The greens and yellows
Of a meadow, of the entire
World, is the rose, above those,
Especially the bleak, envious
Crow, latched to a branch
As scaly and gnarled as his soul,
Blacker than eternal night,
Beside the shining light
Of the rightly charmed
Wild rose,
Alone.
             Sorry is the crow—
Most of all unmatched, strikingly
To long flame of chalk faced moon,
Rides in airs, misbegotten, makes
Desolate cries, of wounding caws,
Self inflicted, so, somehow seems
Unalive, tarred, undead as smoke,
His fettered, black, unfeathering
Eyes.  Not like the blooming spark
And flash of the stunning, runner,
Unbeaten, indomidible, shocking,
Wild rose, unmired by bramble,
Wood nor motley thorn of bush,
A star of life, razor cut, blistering,
Free, this spirited, ****** heart,
Set, a rage, on jagged leaf.

In tangled straps of green wire saplings,
A Rose is even more a rose, next to crow.

.
We met
        On the wooden boards
Of the music
        Hall, in the fire
Glow of lights
        Dimmed and aflame.
A match was set,
        She was young
My eyes grew
        Wildly kissing her
And we lived
        Long in soft days
Held by the sea
        On Shanganagh
Cliffs, feral
        And green as Ireland
And for one
        Moment our eyes
Shut, caved in
        A day.  Now wood
Below, holds us
        In the casket
Of pine memory,
        Wrap of vines
Sharp wine of days
        Splendour
And in mournful
        Breeze, to these
We did surrender
        At a tomb
And silent grey birds
        Stood muttering
Where we both
        Are cold, grieving
Alone as we are
        Placing flowers.

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.

.
Frost, climbing across
And the air, still, laden
Snows dimple ground,
As trees shiver, naked,
Wind massages, creeps
And sun, slow subdues,
Flew birds away swept,
Icicles dropping intrude,
This is an end beginning,
Cold over warms winning.

.
She rides the chanting waves
At the seas horizon,
In fires of star sheen and moon shine,
Sweet Niamh of the golden hair, and aqua eyes,

Princess of the green sea turtles,
Of the coral sea grottos,
Anemone naves and kelpie skins,
Trailing the rainbow schools of the whirling fin,

The whole twining ocean globe of blue is swooning
Under the milky waving skies and unfathoming deeps,
Her laughter lighting the unremembered bottom of the seas.

.
When your strung hair drops,
In any chamber, all is opened,
All is lithe, flowerfield of mirror
To the gathered stars unto fire,
Below as above is a universe,
Your eyes asking in surrender,
Were never so fair as your face,
My soul drowning in those blue
Orbs, what oceans of sparkle, so
Like jewels in a thousand temple
Reliefs of gold and safire offered
By flesh and thunder, waits to roll,
To wash and crackle firmaments,
Of earthly desires and obsession,
In your temples above and below.

.
She speaks in tongues and earthwards—
Angels fall listening how to know divinity
From lips that open and close as do tides
Slip, blooming with the face of the moon.

She walks in airs of splendour and light—
Shoulders kin, her child riding on a beam
Vanquishing the sun with celebrated night
Set in reflection on lake waters, little moon.

In disused field is a blooming temple.
An ancient apple tree waits eternal,
This stone bold sculpture was forged
With nimbus hands and windy eyes.
In hushed airs, Shiva dances to light,
Waves, sacred arms without swaying.

Bearded ones come to pay homage,
The solemn chickadees, the ranging
Sparrows, red robed robins— priestly                                                         ­    
Doves, all who see are one enveloped
In graces of the New World Bodhi tree,
Waiting for blossoms so dearly come.

Edge of boughs brim under heavens
Landing with mystic verges of spirit
Into the mind of the eyes of nature—
Kali-flowered ears of lichen are pale
Green in their devotions, pummeled
By seas of seasons, foggy to the fray.

Finches, yellow, reflecting in a star,
Devout wee lamas golden with halo,
Are kneeling above berm, this nobby
Trunk, stave, inside bodacious stupa
Bell who sings clear, without ringing,
Body of elder grace, wisdoms, ages.

In cast irreverence, seldom do crows
Visit, when they do there is menace
Of the Jinn, dark giants in the levels,
Mercifully, out of shame, they do not
Stay, black wings due, die in luminous
Day moon, rain soak sun, balmy mist.

On pilgrim journeys, whirlings, prayer
Wheels, guide shy flocks riding gnarl,
Indie goddess, to overreaching love,
By sores of hollow in the steps, open
To being, brindles of myriad meadow
In temple blossoms— numinous suns.

Of both earth and sky, shines a beauty,
Whose form is written in blistering bark,
The ciphers of tongue to Sanskrit leaves
And lost fruits, given over, unforbiddens,
Within old apple tree a great wilderness
And all the branch of wings are knowing.