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1.4k · Jan 2014
Haiku ( forlorn )
Seán Mac Falls Jan 2014
Beach walking alone.
Never, short as Donegal strands,
Endless— without her.
1.4k · Jan 2013
After the Elopement
Seán Mac Falls Jan 2013
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?
Nineteen priestesses were assigned to tend the perpetual flame of the sacred fire of Brigid. Each was assigned to keep the flames alive for one day. On the twentieth day, the goddess Brigid herself kept the fire burning brightly.

The goddess Brigid was also revered as the Irish goddess of poetry and song. Known for her hospitality to poets, musicians, and scholars, she is known as the Irish muse of poetry.
1.4k · Sep 2012
Blueberry Picking
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2012
Blueberry picking was no chore.
In the hoary-head of blue things,
Stuff was easy, and ripe for the picking,
Bunching blue-baubles in baskets over-ripened
Of berries.   On special mornings, due southwest
In lazy hills, round my home, — bells  
Were breaking, in quiet sections of the Canton,
Massachusetts woods, and playing by them,
We rounded blue notes, some friends and I,  
Plucked-out tunes to the breeze, on leafy-
Instruments, and pulled our weight, into moil-moisted  
Bushels, (one batch of blue was more than a ton  
Of any other fruit!)   
Toiling, till the sky would peek  
And spill its hue.  Foragers were we, as teaming
Minnows round a polk-a-dot reef, feasting on some great  
Blue-Fin’s roe, brave savages, painted in the glow of ember-
Light, of burnished yellows, and bushy-blanched browns
Drenched by dew and dappled in the stipple
Of sun-brushed fire, all the colours making patterns, even  
Box Turtles knew.   How merry it was we made our labors,
Why it was wicked!  And muggy from the heat of cool  
Indigo stars, we squenched our thirst, in glugs  
Of kisses, each following the greatest by far,  
And one soft day, we did notice the crown
Of a Princess, set on top of each full  
Noble-blooded faery-pearl dropped
As if to commemorate all  
The things that were worth  
Knowing, stuff that was ripe,  
Easy, and rapt
In blue.
1.4k · Dec 2014
Sequoia
Seán Mac Falls Dec 2014
Evergreen tree,
Burning red bushels
Of bark, branches open,
Cloud robed against, beyond
The mighty blue mountains,
Sage colour, rages of green,
Teems immortal as the sun,
Where great eagles landing
To nest in the towering
Chapel of a giant body
Adorn, what was always
Regal, everlasting, true,
Spiraling to the citadels
Of the swirling heavens
And even your crown,
A thrusting spire.
1.4k · Nov 2013
Two Swans
Seán Mac Falls Nov 2013
The morning world in mist dissolves and under,
Towed to heaven, we, a plod below the death
Of clouds, sing mute, where they trumpet-glide
Flashing into peace.  Three-toed slabs, parched
Of orange, web the stars over the wine
Dark seas and chalk the churn and twining earth
Into gloaming.  In rapt stillness they,
Are import and income, parables,
Echoes of the innocent song sung to a spire,
Gilded hutches, to those who heap on brightness
Swans are brighter even more with blackest
Eyes, they pierce the silent shroud all starry.
I wish that we were like two swans my love,
Neck of nape, embracing without touch.
1.4k · Mar 2015
Haiku ( conundrum )
Seán Mac Falls Mar 2015
Always see one worn  .  .  .
Lone shoe in streets and alleys,
  .  .  .  Never see a pair.
1.4k · Sep 2012
Unconditional
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2012
You've asked me how can I see a future when love, in all
Its numinous beauty, is waning?
I reply, the immortal stars still shine above the veil of clouds.
You say, why are the salmon swimming to their pools of origin
Only to die as they spawn?  Only to die?
I tell you their love is unconditional, like mine.
You ask me did the giant sequoia know it was shelter for the burning grasses
When they walked from the seas?  I reply yes they knew.
You question me about the lofty snow cranes that fly over the Himalayas
And I reply by describing
How the priestly flocks, chanting on their mission, honk—
Announcing the mantle steps to the heavens.
You inquire about the elephantine manatees gracing the shallow banks
And wonder if the sea mermaids remember their lives beyond the latitudes
Of capricorn and cancer?
Or you’ve discovered in the wind a new reasoning as to why
The talons of the paired eagles lock in midair as they court?
You want to understand the nimbus garden, ocean slate, of lake Titicaca
Where resides the Andean sea horse gliding above the clouds?
The whales that circle dance in unison collecting krill?
The noetic display of the birds of paradise, the songs of nameless creatures
Playing in the wilderness like a forgotten melody only lovers lips remember?

I want to tell you that true love knows this, that life in its
Prismatic shimmer is all the myriad colours of infinite existence wrapped
In time to the sublime structure of white and bones.  I must tell you
That the flower is mighty in its opening, the humming bird is a sorcerer
Who needles ambrosia with vortex wings weaving his way to the Gods.

But I am nothing beside your disbelief which has arrived, before
I can even imagine the sweet awakening, like doom, my shell is the iridescent
Hollow of the one eyed Abalone, discarded in the deep fathoms
Of the ocean pressures.

I swim the tides as you do, investigating
The endless tendril seas,
And in my chest, during the night, I woke up empty,
The only thing treasured, a golden face
Trapped inside my dreams.

                                                                   
                              ­                               ­                       — after Neruda
1.4k · Feb 2013
Zz Haiku ( diaspora )
Seán Mac Falls Feb 2013
Dark clouds moving in,
Sun streak fades— lovers last wish,
  .  .  . Raining by the sea.
1.4k · Jun 2014
Haiku ( numinous )
Seán Mac Falls Jun 2014
Bright moon, perfect, full,
Her *******, unbound in starlight,
Heavens outnumbered.
1.4k · Mar 2013
Maid of Moon and Glade
Seán Mac Falls Mar 2013
Water nymph, you are the gentle wind
Bursting the daisy, your eyes, are bells
Of blue echinacea spiriting the light—
Echoing sound which water makes, ring
The laureled forest leaves in cathedrals
Newly sprung of pews, meadows, spark,
The dance of bees, who trace your honey
Scent in combs of ambrosia and sunshine.
The miraculous waters are floored under
Your white, lily petals of feet, your nests
Of hair are embracing tendrils of the wild
Grape, wine and sweet, long forgetfulness.
Maid of the wood, daughter to the moon;
Are you of Elysium or temptress of doom?
1.4k · Jan 2015
Haiku ( wraith )
Seán Mac Falls Jan 2015
Owl flies in woods  .  .  .
Rush of death in the still air,
  .  .  .  Without any sound.
1.4k · Oct 2013
The Falcon
Seán Mac Falls Oct 2013
Falcon rise— yellow racing eyes,
Blue wraith that rakes the skies,
Never has one fared such beauty,
Airs naught wholly bright as thee.

Is there a kneel for end of days—
Songs, deeds for those who prey?
Is there light breaking pied wings,
Or is heaven overlord to all things?

Sun spots feathering coated crest,
Talons top spires mountain breast,
When rivers of the wind fail all fowl,
What grace and splendour in a cowl?

Is there a psalm in the wailing winds,
A hymn that carries all innocent sins,
Or a fable, blue as stupendous skies,
A truest place where redemption lies?

The sea slides with lost ocean birds
And blue wings coast, row unheard,
Edging the skies with razors' tinge,
Seeding the immortal spark begins.

Falcon rise— yellow racing eyes,
Blue wraith that rakes the skies,
Never has one fared such beauty,
Naught airs wholly bright as thee.


                  — after William Blake
1.4k · Jun 2013
Quarry
Seán Mac Falls Jun 2013
Wings beat to overtake.
Now, above you like a fire shot
In a silent film the rush begins.
Wings fold inward, the air turrents,
Streams, as a ball swirling in a tube,
Grey bullet in the barrel,
The slide to the **** and the talons,
Make their mark before the hitch.
Soft plosives bearly sounding,
Crake, blood cupped in the claws,
From the breast and the rose  
Heart, now in a tail spin,  

Nostrils whine in the fall.  
No jury just but a sup of the faded  
Heart by one raging one.  
The wilted wings are stirring  
To the last as the pointed  
Wingman ferries, the wholly bred,
Quarry of perfection, jolts  
And jilts, and His scythe of feathers
Holds sway in the whirl.
As the God-made creature
From high heaven flies
The mourning dove must die.
1.4k · Jan 2013
Haiku ( searching )
Seán Mac Falls Jan 2013
Woodpecker drifting,
Starry red-head loves old trees,
His wandering bark.
1.4k · Jun 2015
Tao of Weird
Seán Mac Falls Jun 2015
Same ******* Peacocks
Trending over and over
What's wrong on HP?
1.4k · Oct 2012
Haiku ( fitting )
Seán Mac Falls Oct 2012
Bounders drawing lines,
Last days lowered like a boom—
  .  .  .  Chalk of rising moon.
1.4k · May 2017
Marked by Sidhe
Seán Mac Falls May 2017
.
I tried to capture you
In the forests of Donegal,
Your bark of hair, red, so dark,
Was smear, camouflage, and window
Into a lost Fae world made as I was sinking
Without ever knowing, falling, without fear
Years later, you have long left and I still
Breathe in a wooden box of dream.
In Celtic folklore, the Irish: leannán sí (shee) "Barrow-Lover" (Scottish Gaelic: leannan sìth; Manx: lhiannan shee; is a beautiful woman of the Aos Sí (people of the barrow or the fairy folk) who takes a human lover. Lovers of the leannán sídhe are said to live brief, though highly inspired, lives. The name comes from the Gaelic words for a sweetheart, lover, or concubine and the term for a barrow or fairy-mound.

The leanan sídhe is generally depicted as a beautiful muse, who offers inspiration to an artist in exchange for their love and devotion; however, this frequently results in madness for the artist, as well as premature death.
1.4k · Nov 2012
Haiku ( privileged )
Seán Mac Falls Nov 2012
Bird watching, day dreams,
Catered meals, naps, massages,
Another day for cat.
1.4k · May 2017
Locked up
Seán Mac Falls May 2017
.
*Tasting lips do latch
To heavens our bodies go
Above and below
1.4k · May 2013
Haiku ( Connacht )
Seán Mac Falls May 2013
Yawning dreams, slate hues,
Mystic shout mournful mountains,
  .  .  .  Connemara blues.
Connacht or Connaught is one of the Provinces of Ireland situated in the west of Ireland. In Ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" (in Irish: rí ruirech). In Gaelic historical annals from old Irish it was described as a western kingdom of learning, the seat of the greatest and wisest druids and magicians and where the men are famed for their eloquence, their handsomeness and their ability to pronounce true judgement.

It is said that the Fir Bolg ruled all of Ireland right before the Tuatha Dé Danann arrived. When the Fir Bolg were defeated, the Tuatha Dé Danann were so touched by the courage of their enemy that they would give them a quarter of Ireland. They chose Connacht.
1.4k · Aug 2014
Haiku ( anointed )
Seán Mac Falls Aug 2014
Seashells and castles,
Imagination, holy as the skies,
Sea sprayed our faces.
1.4k · Apr 2014
Haiku ( supernova )
Seán Mac Falls Apr 2014
She was cold iron—
I smelled in her blood, elixir,
What made stars explode.
Massive stars go supernova when iron is fused. Iron is the final and heaviest element in the fusion process in stars. The core becomes heavy and cannot contract any more, the core collapses, rebounds of the surface and the star explodes as a type II supernova.
1.4k · Sep 2013
Maid of Moon and Glade
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2013
Water nymph, you are the gentle wind
Bursting the daisy, your eyes, are bells
Of blue echinacea spiriting the light—
Echoing sound which water makes, ring
The laureled forest leaves in cathedrals
Newly sprung of pews, meadows, spark,
The dance of bees, who trace your honey
Scent in combs of ambrosia and sunshine.
The miraculous waters are floored under
Your white, lily petals of feet, your nests
Of hair are embracing tendrils of the wild
Grape, wine and sweet, long forgetfulness.
Maid of the wood, daughter to the moon;
Are you of Elysium or temptress of doom?
1.4k · Jun 2015
Love Songs of Connacht
Seán Mac Falls Jun 2015
( Song )*

Europe in the dark age, was swept by an ignorant plague
While Ireland was known for poets, scholars, and saints

Invaders, would have Éire destroyed while only hurting themselves
For it was the Celts, who taught poetry to ancient Greece

    They tried to burn her culture down
    But the ashes of Ireland proved fertile ground
    Green is the pearl, seed of the vine; great garden
    Love Songs of Connacht

Beaten, almost forgotten she was
Her sons sent off to the colonies
And Ná Fíle; her poets, became beggars in the streets

    They tried to burn her culture down
    But the ashes of Ireland proved fertile ground

Thank you Lady Gregory!
Thank you A.E.!
Thank you Will. B. Yeats!
Thank you Ó Rathaile, Ó Carolan too!
Thank you Mr. Synge!
Thank you most of all Douglas Hyde

    Green is the pearl, seed of the vine; great garden
    Love Songs of Connacht

    They tried to burn her culture down
    But the ashes of Ireland proved fertile ground

Thank you Lady Gregory!
Thank you A.E.!
Thank you Will. B. Yeats!
Thank you Ó Rathaile, Ó Carolan too!
Thank you Mr. Synge!

Thank you Standish Ó Grady, and Pearse!
Thank you Connolly, James!
Thank you Merriman, Ferguson too!
Thank you Rua Ó Súlleabháin!
Thank you James Clarence Mangan!
Thank you Tommy Davis!
Thank you most of all Douglas Hyde!

    Of all the nations of the world
    Only Ireland's dream is a poet's dream
    Green is the pearl, seed of the vine; great garden
    Love Songs of Connacht
    Great garden
    Love Songs of Connacht
In 1893 W.B. Yeats published The Celtic Twilight, a collection of lore and reminiscences from the West of Ireland.  The book closed with the poem "Into the Twilight". It was this book and poem that gave the Irish Literary revival its nickname. In this year Hyde, Eugene O'Growney and Eoin MacNeill founded the Gaelic League, with Douglas Hyde becoming its first President. It was set up to encourage the preservation of Irish culture, its music, dances and language. Also in that year appeared Hyde's The Love Songs of Connacht, which inspired Yeats, John Millington Synge and Lady Gregory.
.
1.4k · Aug 2013
Haiku (letting go)
Seán Mac Falls Aug 2013
Children under trees,
Windy leaves wanting to fall,
Autumns' joy swirling.
1.4k · Jun 2013
Marked by Sidhe ( shee )
Seán Mac Falls Jun 2013
I tried to capture you
In the forests of Donegal,
Your bark of hair, red, so dark,
Was smear, camouflage, and window
Into a lost Fae world made as I was sinking
Without ever knowing, falling, without fear
Years later, you have long left and I still
Breathe in a wooden box of dream.
In Celtic folklore, the Irish: leannán sí "Barrow-Lover" (Scottish Gaelic: leannan sìth; Manx: lhiannan shee; [lʲan̴̪-an ˈʃiː]) is a beautiful woman of the Aos Sí (people of the barrow or the fairy folk) who takes a human lover. Lovers of the leannán sídhe are said to live brief, though highly inspired, lives. The name comes from the Gaelic words for a sweetheart, lover, or concubine and the term for a barrow or fairy-mound.

The leanan sídhe is generally depicted as a beautiful muse, who offers inspiration to an artist in exchange for their love and devotion; however, this frequently results in madness for the artist, as well as premature death.
1.4k · Jul 2015
Moon
Seán Mac Falls Jul 2015
Moon in eastern sky
And mist melds mountains with trees
Lantern is sailing west
1.4k · Sep 2012
Haiku  ( bare )
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2012
Fall needles shedding,
Chickadees pecking for seeds,
Shivering larch tree.
1.4k · Sep 2012
Bolivar Pond
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2012
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.
Inisfáil (Inish-fall) ] Gaelic word meaning: Isle of destiny, island of the fall, Ireland.
1.4k · Nov 2012
Galicia
Seán Mac Falls Nov 2012
Beyond the massif peaks of Europa,
Above the ancient pillars of Heracles
Where rain and ocean are weaving,
Lays a fabled kingdom born of waves
And noble strands, my beaten hearts
Haunting, the lost, lush sylvan lands
Of Galicia.
                   Where Incomparable, dark
Haired women, mythic, of Amazonian
Fairness, side the valleys and moors
Of soon forgotten dreams and secretive
Wolves slide amongst warmed runnings
Of the ram and moans of ewe, where
Way bountiful seas are over spilling,
In octopus and pearly gemmed shells,
The scalloped pilgrimages unfolding,
Where incense burns with under stars
Encased, the lost Atlantean temples
Of Egyptian sands and storied Gaels,
The clad forests of wandering Titans,

Where snow white beaches end forever
Unmapped in told footsteps, castaway,
As was the magi gift of treasured yards,
Enlightenments, of old and golden isles
Pearling the coasts, sailing the sweet airs
Crossing Iberian gates, to Elysian, eternal,
Galicia.
1.4k · Oct 2016
Vox Populi
Seán Mac Falls Oct 2016
.
*Zombie ego shouts
Among bloodless dead columns
That I once had lived
vox populi:
: popular sentiment
Origin: Latin, voice of the people.
First use: circa 1550
.
1.4k · Jun 2015
Unfaithful
Seán Mac Falls Jun 2015
Snow covers valley
Solitary raven stains
Love world has turned black
1.4k · Jul 2012
Poet To My Eyes
Seán Mac Falls Jul 2012
Poet to my eyes, you are the sight of whitecaps
On the sea water, or the sudden turn of a bird
In flight and as the wave I roll and break,
With drowning wings that lift toward you, my sky.

Mistress to my soul, I am the nave of your holy
Cathedral.  My head is but an occluded riff,
De-noting songs you make in aisling airs of light
Polyphony, my star over-sings the windy globe,

She swallows heaven, like swallows blacken the dusk.
Shearwater bird, strip my surface with your cutting
Wings.  My waves peak to reach you starling girl.

The sloughing chill of winter dies quick in sighs
Waft asunder my little Indian summer, wake me
From sleep and I shall dream but once for your kiss.
aisling ( ash-ling )  |  Gaelic word meaning:  a vision of promise.
1.4k · Jun 2014
Haiku (prestidigitation)
Seán Mac Falls Jun 2014
At end of my show  .  .  .
Angel in the wings appeared,
  .  .  .  True love came to me.
1.4k · Feb 2013
To My Ophelia
Seán Mac Falls Feb 2013
I have lost my sun,
Though I still orbit in a strange attraction.

I have lost my music,
Though I know my heart sings sound.

I have lost my vision,
Though I see in dreams an impossible beauty.

I have lost my sense,
Though this world has never tasted as sour.

I have lost my purpose,
Though aimlessly, I write in pale drear of twilight.

I have lost my reason,
Though I chart dangerous courses without a crew.

I am the last falls of the loveliest red proscenium
curtain.

I am over, undone, a foundling, lost,
Without you.
1.4k · May 2015
Estranged
Seán Mac Falls May 2015
Here I tread on a woodland promontory—
With wings and wind conjuring the rains,
All is vastness and shroud, open, empty,
Even the light is carried away in silence,
My flesh all but smearings on the tableau,
Foothold of dream within disrupted dream,
Our hands once reached out into forever,
Now my soul is seeping from veined cairns,
Cut chains, mist, rains hollowing the wind.
1.4k · Sep 2015
Vesuvian
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2015
Mountain bleeds fire
Falling to sea, dark gold streams
Sun behind her hair
1.4k · Sep 2014
Haiku ( wispy )
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2014
Beauty walks alone  .  .  .
Her eyes drift on forest path,
Shy wind through the trees.
1.4k · Sep 2014
The Osprey (the sky fisher)
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2014
.
The coastal shoals are your dominion.
No salmon, or smelt, nor bottom flounder
Had ever left the sea until you struck,
You are wraith to the kelp beds dream.
1.4k · Apr 2015
Zz Self Extinction
Seán Mac Falls Apr 2015
Pesticide is man
Knowing bumblebees can smell
Withering flowers
1.4k · Sep 2015
I Will Kiss . . .
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2015
.
Rose of your ear,
Lantern in your eyes,
Forest of branching hair,
In Inverness of your midlands,
I shall broach lit vernal deltas,
Kiss deep into darkling depths,
Climb the leaved trunks of thigh,
Drunk in the moisted, muted sighs
Of promise, tendered to surrender,
I shall know your ripened *******,
As bloom of moon paints moons
At night, I will be ****** in milk—
That offers itself to leeching babe,
With little, lithe fingers you rake one,
A wan vagabond, *****, homeward,
I shall know your flowing wetness,
Below my desert, with purpose,
I am lost, in sleep and dream,
May I never wake, may I
Sleep, never, may eye
Always open, keep
In tableaus of oil,
Strokes, hues,
Glittering
Of you.
1.4k · Dec 2018
From a Window
Seán Mac Falls Dec 2018
.
Scurrilous birds fly by,
To nest in the little painted
Houses left clear for them,
In awkward circles they romp
Their peculiar dramas
With ****** wings.

Do they even witness
The skies revolving canvas,
New masterpieces each day,
How the light shimmers
In the sparkle rays of sun,
How the golden fields,
Of vales in sighted sweep
And dance, airy etudes,
By the windfall gusts
So suddenly arising?

These visions are marks
For but few, who hear time
As it plays in stepped quartets
Of the spiraling seasons song,
For the lone mercies, gifts,
To ones most gentle, merest,
Spirited eyes who gaze deftly,
Deep in sacred days,
From a window.
.
1.4k · Jul 2015
Ode to Great Blue Heron
Seán Mac Falls Jul 2015
— for Victoria*

Seasons shuttle the tall stoic figure,
Graceful and solemn as wafted mist,
When seen, as if he was always there,
Overarching into meek, gloamy skies
Of mornings and dusk, mid day, lost,
Seems not right for wading out kills
That crane from above into the mud
And murk of the penny eyed waters
Only the ferryman will tender, for time
Slips, sleeping with the fishes, spears
Puddle and rim in the wakes, sparks
Of waters break like a sputtering fire,
His dart eyes are as yellow as golden
Sun dancing in funeral pyre.  So green
Creatures, must they always be gotten,
Gone, have it coming from the sheering,
Mercies of the Great Blue Heron who is all
Seeing, scything, down to dazed judgement,
Incited, pecking to order at the squirming fold.
Seán Mac Falls Mar 2016
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."
The aisling (Irish for 'dream, vision', pronounced [ˈash-ling]), or vision poem, is a poetic genre that developed during the late 17th and 18th centuries in Irish language poetry.  

In the aisling, Ireland appears to the poet in a vision in the form of a woman, usually young and beautiful. This female figure is generally referred to in the poems as a Spéirbhean (heavenly woman; pronounced 'spare van'). She laments the current state of the Irish people and predicts an imminent revival of their fortunes  .  .  .


Minerva ( Athena ) was the Roman goddess of wisdom and sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. She was born with weapons from the godhead of Jupiter.  From the 2nd century BC onwards, the Romans equated her with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the ****** goddess of music, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, and magic.  She is often depicted with her sacred creature, an owl usually named as the "owl of Minerva", which symbolizes that she is connected to wisdom.

The celtic Gauls revered Minerva ( their name for the goddess being 'Brigit' ).  In this poem the name refers to a mythic place in dream.
.
1.4k · Aug 2016
Iridescence
Seán Mac Falls Aug 2016
After making love
Her body glowed like dawning
Such heavenly light
1.4k · Oct 2013
Haiku ( swan )
Seán Mac Falls Oct 2013
Cloud, moving waters,
Ripples, soft white leaf on lake—
Shape of neck spells name.
1.4k · Aug 2020
Circe
Seán Mac Falls Aug 2020
(sonnet)

Tired, I awoke upon a lonely island beach
And gazed on a Goddess above the shore,
With sea foam hair, coral skin, what dream,
My salt eyes, blinded, open, wanting more,

Conspiring with rays of summer she shone
So bright, this daughter of the sun, we stood
I and my castaway crew, to that siren prone
As she led us to her mansion in the woods.

Her potions tamed the forest wolf and lion,
Spellbinding warrior poets to liven feasts.
Why then must she turn ***** men to swine,
By what she most desired contented least?

Desert falcon, my moly held Pharaohs' breeze
And what nil escape above the wine dark seas.
.
The name 'Circe' means 'falcon.'  She was a beautiful woman, whose braided red hair resembled flames.
In Greek mythology, Circe was a goddess of magic (or sometimes a nymph, witch, enchantress or sorceress). By most accounts, Circe was the daughter of Helios, the god of the sun.
Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. Through the use of magical potions and a wand or a staff, she transformed her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals.

As told in the Odyssey, Hermes told Odysseus to use the holy herb moly to protect himself from Circe's potion and thus resisted it.
Seán Mac Falls Dec 2014
.
She came for a visit,
In brightest winter sun,
Old trees in garden long bare,
Now laden with light as I opened
Door to greet her, a melted kiss
Of delight and to cook with me—
Her special dish, one of many,
Brought her own spices, for us
And carefully showed how,
For when she was gone,
I could make it just like her,
Simple recipe we made together,
New joys to share in kitchen,
The sound of more than one plate,
How we touched each other—
Tasting herbs and spoonfuls of sauce
And wine we spilled into glass and ***,
With candles we dined glowing by a window,
In no time at all, she left.  
                                         Later with care,
Cutting the proper ingredients for one,
I reconstruct each step all alone,
Dish never tastes the same—
House never warm enough.
1.4k · May 2013
Face of Ireland
Seán Mac Falls May 2013
Your face,
Tender, round and dimpled,
Framed with gilded, carved, tawny curled
Whirlpools of hair, long, lighted, and sparkling,
Your face is the face—
Of Ireland.

Your lips,
Full, moist and deathly deep,
Are wells, not well for me, not safe, taboo,
Tantric, tall told tales of brave Odysseus
Under Circe's alchemies
Of forgetfulness.

Your *****,
The zenith of blossom in fabled
Elysium, gateway to the forbidden gardens
Of sage and sinners, warrior-poets, Aphrodite's
Envy, Poseidon's drowning
And smoldering Zeus.
1.4k · Jun 2015
Zz Weaving
Seán Mac Falls Jun 2015
Years of eyes locking
Her hair, fingers knotted with mine
Subtle tapestry
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