In the fall of light,
Trees turn to stone.

This time the sun removes,
Told in tales of the rise of moon.

Light winds rustle rusted leaves—
And a fur will soon be feathered in a bed.

And silence screeches as some flying bark embarks
And the very trees are hollowed in their grieves of the newly
Throrned, red, running rose— of the dearly claimed, arisen dead.

Deep in the chalk of gloaming flame,
The tawn and pale, of moan and loon,
Where under leaves of forest shades,
The crescent rails of the riding moon,
Here is when the quick blood running
Drains with shear seepings and looks,
With eyes agape, small game stunned
Over pines and green hemlock wood,
The ferryman wings and clawing tears,
Whose silent strike and low red raking
Blasts unto an indifferent lane of peers,
This is the house of apparition's name,
A mages fugue, muffled muses reprise;
The **** song which creeps as sun dies.

Birds above windows,
Jostle and sing, building nests—
Cat behind the screen.

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.

To see with black eyes,
Little angels fall from sky,
Always on dark wings.

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.

In the early dawn
A shout is seen
As the moon is falling,
Tawny birds blithely dart
In the scarlet tangles
Of your heart, always escape
Yet never so parading past
The topped prime colours
Of bleeding eyes uncovered,
All the fields and clearing
Woods have cordoned
Themselves, beyond
Your glorious boundaries,
In the knotted, noble trials
Of briar and serrated leaf,
Green trails ply angled thorns
Leading to one ****** crown.

In a flower field—
Blue irises, tendril hairs,
Saw her disappear.

The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.

Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,

His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,

Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.

A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King 
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.

The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,

Wavering the fisher of men, he sways, 
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.

She took me to bed  .  .  .
Skinned in bliss— was reborn, lost,
  .  .  .  In her satin folds.

Bounders drawing lines,
Last days lowered like a boom—
Chalk of rising moon.

Dimples on her face,
Walking long miles without her,
Pebble in my shoe.

In the early dawn
A shout is seen
As the moon is falling,
Tawny birds blithely dart
In the scarlet tangles
Of your heart, always escape
Yet never so parading past
The topped prime colours
Of bleeding eyes uncovered,
All the fields and clearing
Woods have cordoned
Themselves, beyond
Your glorious boundaries,
In the knotted, noble trials
Of briar and serrated leaf,
Green trails ply angled thorns
Leading to one ****** crown.

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.

I have a curled photograph
With waves that crest behind you
And your hair, golden veins,
Tangled in the sun that caves,
There you sit— my open secret,
Atlantic,
Frees my wrested heart
At the fortress—
Altar,
Dún Aengus.

In that place, that wanting place,
High— on the jagged edge
I captured you,
Your eyes were ocean,
Atlantis,
Never so deep, never so
Lost.

Outside is great cave  .  .  .
Coal mines exploding the skies,
  .  .  .  Canaries long dead.

Cloud, moving waters,
Ripples, soft white leaf on lake—
Shape of neck spells name.

Man has wheels,
Books and machines,
Birds have better means,
Sing as they fly.

Man has culture,
Laws and slight reason,
Beast lives for all season,
A life without lie.

Man has fashion,
Art, music, daze galore,
Flower is supreme colour,                                                              
Ferociously alive.

Loser, poser reeks  .  .  .
Psychopathic ego shines,
  .  .  .  Promoting himself.

I have seen her playing
With light, edging her hair,
In crescents so fair.

I have watched her fingers
Twirl and twine, beaming gold,
Threshing precious hold.

I have witnessed the taming
Of the sun's rays, captured,
Spinning in rapture.

And I feel for the pale moon
Who offers his frail, vestige light,
While she sleeps at night.

When I look at her—
This girl is only my friend,                                                                    
But eyes betray me.

POOL OF THE LOST MAIDEN SONG

                1

Down in the shrouded wood a wanderer walks
And dreams the dreamers story he has lived.
Sidled by the stream that sheds blue waters
By the beds, trailing the rail of loves unknown
Kiss and a voice that conjures truest bliss,
Down in the drink where sweet Ophelia sleeps;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the dreamer, he is dreaming . . .
Hair, that ropes the stoic man upon his mount.
Hair, making souls’ lost ending breath a shout,
And hair that weighs the wind, teaches it to sing;
Hair, wending whirlpools waving fools to dive in.


                2

Lost at land’s end the sea lions, washed-up, wail
And buzzards coast where eagles flail, rip tides
Assail and chop the collected bones they drop;
It is a chalky bone-yard break, golden escarpments
Wake and a ******’s salty sermons shake;
Where gathering ghosts glom and chide steeping,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the seeker, he is seeking . . .
Eyes that turn the sands and are mirrors,
Eyes that taught the books of Alexandria,
Eyes that shook the flesh and are seers,
Eyes that lit the pyres, burned true believers.


                3

Deep in the dark wood the waters rush, hush,
Cramp, crew and creep, melodiously tread,
Trammel, and burn as furies in keeping true
The melting moon, the onerous owl, fluttering
Things, muttering wings, cones in darkness
Flings and filmy time flicks by the wayside;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the lover, he is longing . . .
Love, lithe and lyric, he sees your sweeping shapes.
Peace, parsed and pained he hears the voicing gape.
Blind, bliss’d and shamed he wears the votive drapes.
Hungered, thirsted and gone; seeks your pearly gate.


                4

Out in the forest maze the jarring sun seeps
And swirls, only to roust the traveler onward
Where soon he must meet the faces in the grotto
Down in destroyed lands by the seas’ unreasoning
Chime, deep in the dark whine of the shining mermaids,
Where the doomed cry, round the navel of the world,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.

And the doomed, they are crying . . .
“****** beauty bade us, in a star crossed chrysalis,
Made us, choose a desert’s winter of loneliness.
Heed our fate and leave this valley torn of bliss;
The many millions of locust fall in ripest fields.”

The fly makes his way through the house.
Its tongue, like billions before, is tainting  
All it touches.  The fly has wings to spread  
His mess, and though he has innumerable  
Facets to his eyes he cannot see  
The swatter coming.

The house surrounds the fly and is sacred.
As the great blue world beyond is sacred.   
And the fly is spreading fast, flitting here  
And sticking there trampling his own  
Shelter, spreading pollution and excrement  
With a rolling tongue  

That spews and spits upon his own home.   
And though he is happy while he soils  
His house his eyes are two dead worlds  
Barren and still, born to die by the hand  
That flies even higher, so, the fly cannot  
See the swatter coming.

Buzzing, like a burn, through the innocent  
Air he dreams of vast minions rooting  
His world with legion hands.  The house was  
A garden that led him in, he cannot  
Wait for his seed to fester, all's he needs  
Are God’s green plants  

And clean water, some fresh air to conquer.
This house was made for him he would have  
Himself believe.  But when all has dried  
And all is soiled the fly would wish to move  
On, if only he could, trapped as he is  
In the earth and wooden house.

He could taste it all, oblivious to oblivion
In God’s green wooded world— all spinning,  
The sands are running in the sacred home  
That he himself has always defiled,  
As he has never shown any grace;
The swatters hand is His  
Own hand.

Woodpecker reminds  .  .  .
Aches are long in last season,
  .  .  .  Knocking on old tree.

Man has wheels,
Books and machines,
Birds have better means,
Sing as they fly.

Man has culture,
Laws and slight reason,
Beast lives for all season,
A life without lie.

Man has fashion,
Art, music, daze galore,
Flower is supreme colour,                                                              
Ferociously alive.

I am alone with you.
A fire burns in the distance,
It lights our faces
As before in the empty cinema,
Where we arrived, at some beginning,
To watch a foreign film. Our eyes,
In new utterance, murmuring subtitles,  
What words could never speak,
The tips of seats, rows of air
And the moony screen,
A tableau of feathers and cloud,
Two of us, alone, as one,
Rapt in the spread of wings.

Later, alone we dine in the Café  
Campagne. Our conversation  
Deafens a burgeoning crowd,
Coffee was nectar, our words  
Were whispering petals.
Dearest Blodeuwedd, I saw the sweetest  
Sorrow on your face, the green ocean
In your eyes, I was cleansed  
By your tears.  I have always
Known you.

Across the border on the far island,
You stepped into the waters with me
And when you disrobed you lit the stars
And the stars and my eyes kissed your skin,
Your slender legs, columns, tilting
Toward heaven, in the age of Helen,
Touched the water and the sky,
I saw the milky way that night.

Síneánn, I am your Pablo,
We are two white birds sailing
Over the foam of the sea.
Solvent to my stone, you are the hinge
To my casement world.  Rain petal
Voice, lithe, alabaster woman,
I am lost in your Sargasso eyes,
I hold your skin, my Selkie,
Sweet Niamh, I have lived  
One hundred years this week.

It is warm in the distance,
In the country of the sun,
We end at the house in Umbria,
In the autumn, there is no word
Siberia, my light Rosaleen.
Now is harvest time.  
At the great table we feast  
With family and friends  
And I am not alone with you.

In gravest, gravels of untouched soil,
Spearhead of purple, beyond the pale,
One statue of siege upon a windy foil,
What mires meek airs in all you survey?    

Like a frost of summers, you are lord,
To hold that seed in your spiny face,
Depressions of land your promontory,
All up with arms, iron clad as a mace,

Beneath you, the grown motley fields
Are desolate, all flowers bled, blender,
Spiders and birds know you unyielding
The lost aleatory scent of no surrender.

Milky tears at night—
Sparks and rowing words tear out,
  .  .  .  Moon spilling over.

In the lowland fens at the worlds end,
Like the ferryman, a blue heron waits,
Eyes of dragon fly, hover, over still water,
His legs are the oars rowing to the dead.

Otters slide down hill,
Gliding into snow melt creek,
Swimming in the sun.

Lips, soft as petals, rarefied as undiscovered
Wild orchids.

Hair, threads of gold gathered, woven, mined
From secret caves.

Eyes, that fell from violet skies landing on new
Isles of azure.

Skin, so salmon flecked, subtle, delicate, solas,
Destination.

Your body is buried cask and gilded keeper
Of jewels and flame, whispers, searing cold,
Blue fires untamed—

Lush, fertile wanderings, colourful birds, sweeping
Moon, pools of sorrows and light, trees branching,
Pleasures keen, crushing delights without name.

One fence post taller—
Holds round black moons full of death,
Silent wings falling.

Seamed hands unwoven,
Small footsteps lowered away,
  .  .  .  Hearts torn asunder.

In the long nothings of blackest night
Owl whispers.  Hair of mouse stands,
As only an under sieged without spear
Can and grave vole, simply wide open
On his mat of dead leaves, drying time
And even the hare, without hope, hops
Maddeningly caught in dark labyrinths
Without sight, dear is the silent scream
Of all that was mere, so slim after light,
Night scurry, dash, curled fingers, prey.

Moon, low, moans in sky,
Sun is blood, shot over forests—
Red, burning leaves grieve.

Thunder roils the sky—
Under Olympus, bolts hail,
Angry cries of Zeus.

She smiled, those eyes of greeting,
Doors opened with moving breeze,
I entered the drawing room, amused
As I crept with creeks from the hard
Wood floors at the foot of the stairs,
Throughout her abode, finery draped
And sheer linens played with the sun
Round her body.  We drew the curtains
That led the light and waited for dark,
A kettle broke in and filled our cups
By the bay windows that burst, pierced
Into her lovely gardens, we had some
Tea and talked of travels and seasons
Huddled in the glassy mirror of nook,
Of her white conservatory, at the table
Already made with silver and crystal
And song birds sang in the open airs.

I have seen her playing
With light, edging her hair,
In crescents so fair.

I have watched her fingers
Twirl and twine, beaming gold,
Threshing precious hold.

I have witnessed the taming
Of the sun's rays, captured,
Spinning in rapture.

And I feel for the pale moon
Who offers his frail, vestige light,
While she sleeps at night.

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.

Making love in first light,
Softly, she flowers and quakes—
Ripples on still pond.

My skin is ******—
John Moffatt, with scorpion chest,
  .  .  .  Reads with a mean wit.

Sun slowly sinking above the river rushing,
Lime white lilies trumpet to the moon aloof,
Fatted fowl wading, an end to days hushed,
Lo, mercurial otter slips downstream— ****!

There once was a shadow who thought he was a man,
He made his empty bed in a shame of familiars,
For years if not an eternity he never did one single thing,
He contemplated creativity in all its smoke and mirrors,
His only credo was padding his unknowing, limp ego,
Got a gig, speaking before a throng of other shadows,
He rewrote the crook about his own insignificances, suddenly
Nothing's became every things, all was sorely well in the bleak
Under toes.  Shadowman had found his stage, had rearranged
Chaos and insignificance to the point of no enlightenments,
No regrets.  What a sage!
Shadowman aped, traced, spewed in studied literature,
Experienced, faith, trust, fidelity, danced numbers,
In a cellophane pack with all the added extras included,
Found that reflecting words only got in his narcissistic way,
Left the California sun for the New York lowlands
Of the east, that only shine after the hurricane's
Deluge.  Shadowman has reams of flesh plastered
On a mall of wallowing sites only Shadowmen frequent,
Modern is the moly man who makes his own myth.
Shadowman has traveled to the great southern climes
Where hotels of shade tell tales of locals and enlightenment is in a drug
Called something South American or other?  A drug so smug it is a plug
For his dun holy soul.  Shadowman is only a silhouette of himself.
He freely gives seminars to the lame, chained to themselves freely,
Where all the vain echoes are chambered, embodied, entombed.