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— ****!

Hair reigns, scent of her,
She sleeps late by a window,
Morning meadow sun.

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.

Darkness dies again,
Birds calling from bright blue skies,
  .  .  .  After sun rises.

All the valleys, green, rumpled
And cresting in their April dress
And all the creatures who live under,
They wade and stroke and dive,
I live high above in my light house,
Watching the ocean waves.

Her fine hands are gentle
With lithe and spiny fingers
Of bone and fin.

Her eyes are opal,
Essence of emerald and topaz,
A hoard of treasure.

Her hair is sea gathering
And dances in the blue currents
Deadly as the sea snake.

Her skin is coral,
Made of mineral and sorcery,
A fatal beacon.

Her lips are urchin,
Set in a whirlpool of face,
A spiral of doom.

Her voice is dream,
Rocking the lost wrecked ships,
Ground into sand.

Her long tail is fable
Of paradise, beyond faraway seas,
Cyclones and waves.

Cat buries her ****  .  .  .
Dog digs up the carcass bone,
  .  .  .  Crow steals it away.

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.

S(he) woke up one day,
Saw the world in a strange way,
Proclaimed - I AM POET !

Bull frog in fish pond—
Loud, one day I heard last croak,
Raccoon washing hands.

She said that living with me
Was like an eighty year vacation,
If I were a crowd— that would call for,
A standing ovation !

Snow capped mountains,
Bald flights of soaring eagle,
Dual forms Godhead.

Above, this morning, on another plain
Over bogland and tundra rising snows drift
Darting birds white, unlike you, they strain
Fleeing on wing to save some earthen kin.
Blood runs as they race, your shadows cast,
Their hearts beating to some distant dawn.
Under the pale sun, white burns on their backs,
Daylight sings, their ears are horned, little faun
White as snow, the prince of the sky is blessed
On high by drops of rain, and dusted freeze,
Then blood and breast sacrament and eucharist,
Their tale ends in glory, risen as a breeze.

.
We stalked and ran with endless time,
Knee deep in rains of muck, grew lost
In tails of the always new, overreached
By trammeled spots, dotting, red wings
From black birds, knobby toads, garter
Snakes that shocked, marigold swamp
And we bolted above ruddy moccasins,
As ever wet, holey, dying for new days,
Gleaming in the swelters of the horse-
Fly sun, in the giants' grasses, we were
Heroes by the falls of light, glow, dusky
Bold, joys travail and dewy eyes echoed
With sprite flashes by the flies that fired.
And all our conquests— writ in the wind.

Rain dapples in fens of the marshland brooks,
Among the rue hillocks of the sapling woods,

What little peace may fall to drop the shivering
Leaves, rood of the sun, a crop, kestrels quiver

In midair, to keep as they sway into the stations
Of all minions moused who faulter in formation

And bright is birth, when night clothes the day,
As all the mornings long, song of hope, in May.

Lovers entered a forbidden forest bower,
And as they stalked that range, with eyes glazed,
She offered up her hind. Now, with doe eyes,
Deep as his, deep in arousal's sleep, heels fell,
As he knocked and pulled her dark honey hair
And whispered, surrender, into wanting ears,
Softly he drove his hunting command, homing
To his huntress.

Her body braced, yet bade, with heat and vibrance.
Ruthlessly, he ****** his arrow deeper and then
Once more and then again.  She bucked fiercely
And defiant, goading his prodding lance ever more
Ever longer, and parting the pink lines of her white
Rose, he was, and once again, Prince to the dark
Dominion of her quarters.

In the middle of this carnal match they paused.
And looking into the forest beyond they saw
A yearling fawn, a feral Goddess, grazing still,
Bathing in a vale, virginal, wholly unmoved
By their act of venery, lustfully playing, in the innocent
Leaves.  It was as if they were among her kin, a gentle
Doe and a noble stag. From that moment on
The human hunters did not speak.

Falling, again, rolling eyes were deep in arousal's sleep.
Her back was a crescent moon pocked and wet with dew.
He could feel her heart beating in time with his piercing
Prong, her arching back glistened in the suns spittle
As it broke through the dark and vernal ceiling wood.

In the final shot her quivering buck lowered and broke
And a sound not heard, made a scene, a sweet murmuring
Shuddered and sank onto the floor of the forest leaves
With her tale, taken and told, her breathless breath,
Her nostrils cold and her heated and lanced openings
Dripping, draining; here was a New World’s beginning.

Sated, solemn and softly quaking, his woman sweetly laid,
And now, doomed with her doe eyes, two lovers, fated, made;
She glowed, divine, like the rolling brook that mellowed
Slow, in the vine-dark and golden forest stable,
In Artemis’s wood.

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.

I was with the ocean last night and your body
Was its vessel, overflowing.  Words were frail,
Drops indwelling about the shapeless sky,
Water reaching for its own height and breath,
Like touch, were as desperate letters exchanged,
Endlessly read, until like loamy vellums, they
Disappeared in our hands.  Inklings of tide-
Pool and driftwood.

                               My blood was a river that ran
Its course.  Members feeding your deltas and birds
Breeding where the water-russet sheds on pampas
And inverness.  Eyes like wing through ever—
Green, empties the fossil shell.  Fire, brimming
Mountaintops that were, for countless millennia,
Sleeping.  Did I mention that the earth moved?
No?  Her displacement was involuntary.

Then came the waterfalls, lifting throughout
Time.  The scent, searching for its identity,
The wave, calling to its own name— Ocean,
O— cean.  And flowers, opening like galaxies
In the after-light.  A universe of face and hand
With hunger for salt-rain and then the cloud
Burst-blue and spilt and spun more redolent,
Deities, in joyous creation.

I breathe, in your ocean, like a child unborn.

Striped wings scythe, sailing across
The late summer sky, wraithing kites
Wrangle with nimbus streams streak,
Banded birds knowing of deaths trace,
One can see such sound which circles
Make, def cries low by an insects wake.

With cruelty he loved.
Now, life is measured in rains
Never baptismal.

.
In disused field is a blooming temple.
An ancient apple tree waiting 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.

.
In mid airs, dimly,
The ****** birds cluck,
Only flutter useless wings
For they are grounded,
Nor are they beautiful,
O how they feign singing,
Gutteral cluckings only fit
For predators to stalk,
Lame ugly birds prefer
The company of other
Lame, ugly, groundy birds,
With no things, ever, to sing,
Only to preen and beak
For scraps under trees,
Where winged songbirds
Lit by the flighty sun
Do truly sing.

Hazelnuts in fall  .  .  .
Blue jays come as all turns grey,
  .  .  .  Small spots of blue sky.

Birds gather on tree,
Innocent as morning sun—
Cat bleats by window.

I never saw eyes,
Like hers, now we walk together,
Lake water sparkles.

Some extinct species  .  .  .
Man without tattoo, piercings,
  .  .  .  Never owned cell phone.

Lovers entered a forbidden forest bower,
And as they stalked that range, with eyes glazed,
She offered up her hind. Now, with doe eyes,
Deep as his, deep in arousal's sleep, heels fell,
As he knocked and pulled her dark honey hair
And whispered, surrender, into wanting ears,
Softly he drove his hunting command, homing
To his huntress.

Her body braced, yet bade, with heat and vibrance.
Ruthlessly, he ****** his arrow deeper and then
Once more and then again.  She bucked fiercely
And defiant, goading his prodding lance ever more
Ever longer, and parting the pink lines of her white
Rose, he was, and once again, Prince to the dark
Dominion of her quarters.

In the middle of this carnal match they paused.
And looking into the forest beyond they saw
A yearling fawn, a feral Goddess, grazing still,
Bathing in a vale, virginal, wholly unmoved
By their act of venery, lustfully playing, in the innocent
Leaves.  It was as if they were among her kin, a gentle
Doe and a noble stag. From that moment on
The human hunters did not speak.

Falling, again, rolling eyes were deep in arousal's sleep.
Her back was a crescent moon pocked and wet with dew.
He could feel her heart beating in time with his piercing
Prong, her arching back glistened in the suns spittle
As it broke through the dark and vernal ceiling wood.

In the final shot her quivering buck lowered and broke
And a sound not heard, made a scene, a sweet murmuring
Shuddered and sank onto the floor of the forest leaves
With her tale, taken and told, her breathless breath,
Her nostrils cold and her heated and lanced openings
Dripping, draining; here was a New World’s beginning.

Sated, solemn and softly quaking, his woman sweetly laid,
And now, doomed with her doe eyes, two lovers, fated, made;
She glowed, divine, like the rolling brook that mellowed
Slow, in the vine-dark and golden forest stable,
In Artemis’s wood.

IN THE 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.”

Round of twin *******,
Circle thighs, hips, moon bottoms,
The round of my palms.

Flies in the haze morning sputter and splay.
Water drops from leaves rolling with the blown
Blades. The windy whoo of the owls fade,
Blue buried eyes cradled in the hollow
Trees, the swamps seeker is quietly rustled,
Wings of panoply, spangle-speckle the wind,
Over the flames of autumn, talons thistle,
Crown the dominion of the fall, fade in
Sporting meadows colour, till the dive,
Balm of field, marsh, all ignites. Lever pale
Winds finger through the leaves gravely
And rake as you raid, shoulders that burning vale,
Casualties of insect, the lemming song sings
Mouse and vole flash, dark, sparkles the clearing.

.
Rain falls shooting the grounds.
In walks avoiding the schrapnel pits
Bleeding, over spilling, as they swell
Memories play to the mute bitterness
Of far cold, how we went wrong, bled
At arms, burned within salted wound
Of dishonest rush, assault of friendly
Fires as die smouldered out of smoke,
Taint of grace flew into a cauldron dark
A cross of red was only suture to veins
Ripped in the onslaughts and love was
Our only casualty.  We were lost, never
To reach the shining wins of conquered
Spoils, never to bed with timeless downs
Of lovers on leave, we now just soldier on,
To walk with rains, in campaign of sorrows.

The ruddy footworn path is wild and long,
Tracing down all of my woodland years,
Shorter in front, longer behind, fading song,
Was its form cut by me or the grazing deer?

Trebled arms surround—
Drowned in seabeds by cuttlefish,
Threadbare were my bones.

Rua
Dearg,
Rua, roselet,
Gruaige na fíniúna agus scarlet
Fíonchaora, drown me i do deoch
As liopaí, fíona, Ruby, flesh an paisean
Torthaí agus adharc de neart,
Earthen meirge de pebbled cré
Tarraing mé mar uisce seeping
Isteach uiscígh ársa, ualaithe, i bhfolach
Faoi vastness Sahára
Sands. Tá mé scamall de aisling
Drifting, itching, edging chomh maith do chothromú
Hills. Do ******* sruthán mé mar gaile,
Tá do chluasa le haghaidh doves neadaithe
Agus do shúile, tá an spéir ag fanacht, cogaíochta
Le farraige, le haghaidh a dath,
Is é an ghrian wandering strainséir
Mar a thiteann sé, dar críoch gach lá, faded
Mar an fathach gásach de Antares faint,
Eclipsed ag do heavenly
Foirm, do lasair Vulcan
An tsolais.

.
The oceans are dying,
Coral reefs are bleached,
Ghostly acidic in the seas,
Climate is changing, not for Nero,
But for subjects who wait in whirlwinds
Eye, underneath uncapped mountain peaks,
And water is draining underground.  Where is
Reason, where is sense uncommon?  Not with
Elected hands who are wringing to lords of zero,
Whose legions are sent off, engaged in foreign wars,
To scathe, faraway dramas brought back home,
Politicians squabble, as they reel, cashing in,
Seals of unapprovals, witness hollow, low rings,
Infrastructure crumbles, above our dry heads,
And Nero plays his fiddle, in a land of perky dead,
John Lennon said NYC was in reality the new
Rome, soon set to burn, in a decade or so,
Nero knows, Nero plays, could give a ****'
Humanity is Nero playing his fiery fiddle
There is only one issue of news that matters,
Not bread, or circus, Kardashians, or deflated
Footballs, it is our survival, the earth, heating up,
Is angry and we are small, deaf, blind and numb,
A mankind of fools with Nero playing his fiddle.

There is no awakening.  Outside the cave
Light shadows in the sun, a blinding
Muck veils desolation in the vein-bled,
Good men, stumps of the naked forests,
And bird song drowned by the droning dead,
Ignoble, this is no country for old men.

In the open, all lie freely, lacquered clean
Sunning social graces, shine pornographic,
Know truth is real yet, embalmed by speakers,
Pages, their flame a cross, churning in a mire,
Our glass cities run time mendaciously silent;
The euphony of the untruths, the bent sign.

In Catatonia words are watered but never
Change, sapped of meaning, seasons fall
By the handy green, the spring leaves, tipped
Off balance scaled to autumns teeming news;
The barren shores, breaks, bless the vacuum
Tubes, and pray a curse, fawn the head lamps.

In the homeless land anxious creatures divide.
The concrete utterance is picked to rubble.
The stones ground into sand and we ringing
In delight, moving mandrake, mobile cadavers,
Orbit to satellite are digging babylon down
In the false hood, ****** by the mortar.

The ruin architects mark, fork millions
Of tongues in tributary, as does a great
River from a stony source.  The sterling
Feed their stock with tainted food, plants
Regenerate the mangled codex twining-tare;
Throws the babe with baptismal waters.

In the soulless land children peak abandoned,
They fall on temple steps by the golden mean.
We pattern the sky in the bold fabric of pity
And mercy but the strands fade out running;
Our cruel and only kind would rend the stars,
Would fallow Elysium, bleed gold to the vein.

How did we end mortal under the divining
Sun?  Down base our provident ways watching?
We wave in fealty to the dominion of spins
And shadow, gussied Gods so proudly made,
Desolate, vain, air escaping to whisper;
We are sailing from Byzantium.

Hazel tree, long breeze,
Young tendril branches stretching,
Woman combing hair.

The sea gulls— who fly in wanton
To the horizon, are a spirits
calling, are sea songs falling
To my mind they falter— as I
Have known such cozen to the sun
That falls each day nor do I see
It rising.  My world is weighted,
Under, pass the lining of the quick,
By the mounted cloud which hangs silver
Over the plated night. The owl,
Whose eyes of Janus tails, when wanes
The lids, tied to crescent holey
Whelm of malevolent moon,

Praise over me, with wooly wings,
Is silent as shadow.  I may strut or run
But they do come as the shadows will
With cahooting sun, and the blotting
Bald faced moon, chiaroscuro—
The days feign and heaven pales under
The wake of the luna sea.

       In darkest daylight
I shamble toward the flat horizon
Where the seabirds fly, till their ends,
I take two-faced my faulty comfort
As I see them, falter, falling, yet never
Do they touch the gloaming ground.

.
Crystal sparkles—
From within, with ores,
Mineral, quartz, precious
Commonalities from earths
Core.  Wind has attempted
To make shy marks— falling
Sorrowfully short and water
Has edged and smoothed
By centuries too of trying.
This then was their show,
A kind of immortal love,
Everlasting by its trials,
As even the sun knows,
For a ley line, etched so fey,
Runs each wild orbs circumference,
Separates moss from clean stone,
Tracing the path of a star.

You were my gift,
Soft, sweetness, little one,
Eyes of moon and ocean
Hills of creation, of shadow
And bread.  In your nakedness
I fled the earth and bathed
In starlight and dust at the end
Of the forever of the sky.  
In that silence,
Of exploding cosmos and vapour,
I fell, feeling in your smiles the suns
Decay, I felt light beyond
Its barrier, and was decimated
In the gravity of the neutron
Blue of floating eyes in separation.
Your faraway orbs were lost
To me in the frozen dark energy
Of shunted light and the cold
Vacuum of space.
It was my birthday
And you were set on leaving.
It was my birthday
When I nearly died.