( Sonnet )*

I look for Leo, his tawny dress,
His noble pride.  I see him ever,
In silent days his warmth his stride.  
Our friendship moved, grew a lease
With eyes sleepy, tempered, so wise,
Always serene.  How his waif voice
Would purrmurr, did chide and lift
Me from my human daze, my king
This spring is full of remembrances
And mornings that linger with mute
Vibrations and greetings.  How, now
I fear the carpets pressed unmoving
And times caress unsoothing.  I look
For you, with loving pause, and I cry.

Veined wings fell when I died,
Fell in mid flight on one last
May Day, on fire with the sun—
Only the dust knew me there,
It fell so gracefully with me.

A downy feather, once was—
Dropped from on high, before
A great white falcon turned the air,
Even thought to prey or of stooping,
Of noble birth was I, falling earthward.

One dry— red, pine needle fell,
Lost in thick piney bed of so many
Others strewn on the forgotten said,
The wind as it unceremoniously fled
And now no path was leading there.

At one grassy edge of a ******—
Bay some gravel clay gave way
To form a place where water, airy,
Lolls and eddies into tiny whirlpools
This was all the dance of my days,

Only the dusk knew me there—
And the unobserved eclipse going
Through all its phases and a forest
Fired, under clovers without bees,
Veined wings— fell when I died.

If I were to become again
Your dove, in all its tenderness,
Your star in the holding sky,
Would we never know once more
The miracle of flight, of white
lsled lands, undiscovered, burgeoning,
And green, the rainbow sparkled peaks,
The oceanic, new sights of the eye?

Bloodless moon sinking,
Chalk white, ball of dust crumpled,
Gone— she bled my heart.

.
In dusk a cloud moves,
Barely are there any stars
And the sheet drops, sinks,
As lovers we came to this
Gentle pond without guile
Under the willows green,
Set on the banks of whin,
In sight of a stone bridge
And settled in to watch
The swans arrive and go,
Like windy arcs of bounty
Under great falling blanket
Of indigo and gold sparkling,
Enameling eyes of the heavens.

Now, I come to visit alone,
Only memories gliding slow,
Love has fled near after song
The sweetest spring awakening,
How time unveils dark truths,
My hair, it falls in the wind
With the groping willows,
The godly eyes of the skies
Are now mere stars that flash,
My love is betrothed to another,
Still, the cool white swans at dusk
Ride in waters turned shallow, murky
And black as their eyes in day fall,
And yet they remain wondrous,
White rose of my soul,
Drifting away.

It would not stop, the drop dripping
Faulty well and I was cornered in
Your eyes, when your love came down.
The gentle rain was a deceiving
Flood.  The softness in your voice
Was dim light bent, on my banishment.

I began to notice the kind indifference,
The doldrum swale, when your love
Came down, was like you were employed
Only— half trying to get along
With me.  My own dulcet music
Crashed in two, she wails a shamed—

Diaphany and darkness from the corner
Room began to grow, when your love
Came down.  The light that moved so dear,
Became a precious ration, it was
A black starvation and I began
To die from tasteless food, sad music,

Fading sun, no expectations—
And laughter meant for others.  I bled
For years on open wounds and I—
Could hear the wind that rails at ones tomb,
When your love came down.

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.

Odd boxes,
Patch the room.
Small plates of food
Half eaten, dusted,
With leftover crumbs and papers.
The phone never calls
And shades are drawn for days
Only opening for small, dropping lights
That move in the eves.

I can
Not look at all the photographs I took
Of us
Even though I want to,
Even though they lie
Close to me
With my unmade bed, on the floor
Always falling,
But never to sleep, without you,
Empty.

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.

At end of desert,
My bones by her oasis,
So real was mirage.

Sailors jumping ship,
America's golden star—
Chinese junk sails east.

Colours hug branches,
Hungry birds patching bare trees,
Wings of winter leaves.

.
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.

Dry words reassure  .  .  .
Her still eyes breaking down speech,
  .  .  .  My eyes are raining.

( in honour of Memorial Day )*

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?

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.

Bright belle, chiming sun,
Colourful birds yet to see,
Hushed morning wishes.

He shuffles his muffled way through cardboard aisles,
Oblivious, sheltered, speaking in a mumble of tongues,
His piecemeal truths search for all that is meaningless,
Where he carves a gravestone—arguments in the rows.

I fill the bird bath,
Then splashes, wings, songbirds play,
Joy to fill again.

Before music was a poem—
Writ in an empty black book
And then a guitar played me,
The world was rung in stars,
Simple and real as spun light
On a staff of gold in the dark.

And word becoming structure,
Branched out into leaving sky,
The notes of the minded heart                              
Opened in modulation of keys
And time was rooted in beats,
The song tapping in our dream.

After— music was a poem,
Old as a birth from the lamb
And memories calling forth,
From landed dreams awoke,
Everything before led me on,
This journey into bright morn.

All set for bluebirds  .  .  .
Freshly painted bird houses,
  .  .  .  Sparrows moving in.

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

Cool room, most steamy,
I wait with heated towels,
  .  .  .  Her bath almost done.

I came to the pavilion of the big cats
And in the center was a palace ruin,
The walls were stone and feeble mortar,
The great, golden monarch was the lion.

With wisdom eyes, he gazed upon me,
I lowered my head as was my station,
He did not move, nor deign to care,
In His royal chamber I was under thrown.

I thought, you are caught my over lord,
But his stance said, these bars are scepter
And I heard him say with a long lost roar,
'Hear my horn, I am he, the storm of Jericho.'

In the palace of the mighty, indifferent, king
His thundering voice crackled the lambing
Stables and even heaven closed under ceiling
Dome and I was caged when the walls fell away
And the whole, blown world, remade, a zoo.

Her eyes,
Sunken, blue
With edges of ruddy green,
Of olive, kelp, fatigue,
A certain muddy camouflage,
Bright with purpose,
Ambition and fierce urgency,
Set their twin star sights
On me and I learned a new
Word that day—
Surrender.

I fell into formation,
Saluting her stars in the fullest light
Of the falling day.
I learned how to survive
Under such searing heat
And became intimate
With sneak attacks,
Friendly fire, sudden blitzkrieg
And the nuclear winter,
The dark sheet,
Of sorrows unveiling.

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.

In early morning,
Mist revolving joys,
Everything so glorious,
The grey fox on the shores,
The great blue herons,
Light houses of dawn,
Arching into heavens,
Overlooking all souls,
Such colours by the sounds,
Lilting in the scores of clover,
Of bees notating and staffs,
Sway of staved dragonflies,
Dropped dew belled in petals
And whole world lathed
With harmonious light.

Across the silvered pond
Were deep woods without name,
For journeys into wrested sleep
And light poured, raining
Through the spring leaves,
Staining the glass of the sky,
Ordaining the stationed hearts,
Held by the still deer, who walked
On waters, wading into sun,
Each night destroyed
By freshness and rays,
The mottled waking meadows,
Green as ever growing,
More alive then old legend,
O to be a pilgrim with eyes,
Opening!

To be shy lord in the fortresses
Of fallen trees and savour such
Piney sense as rooted sassafras,
The smells of mosses and leaf,
On the shores of the painted
Turtles, shaded by lurching trees
Mushroomed over shallows, sunning          
And hear the foghorned frogs
Alerting the dark gleeming, red-
Winged blackbirds to their reeds
Among the rocks a child
Skips, hums upon.

So breaking was the boy
In the hood of the pond,
More alive, golden, than a star,
Round that very crested shire,
In the berry vines of ripeness,
Winding marshes at play,
Where blush of wild ducks
Endlessly saunter and rooks
Dot the airs circling eternal.

Now in ages past,
After, pond enameled
So far away still sings
Of childhood to come,
For any lost soul who waits,
Beyond cries, a warbles lulling,
What songbirds might ring,
For newborns who break,
Into some future paradise,
Births of new days dawning,
Dominions of the sun.

Ravens scatter outside my pain.
A throw of die against the winters

First snow and the window needs cleaning,
Maybe later.  The running glass

Is watery and after I make love
With you, I wake to the severing light

That is always silent.  The phone
Does not ring, as my cat has told me

Many times, let us play she says,
The way it used to be under

The red wood beams on the hard wood
Floors, you would cry in that vacancy.

Though we lived in a one bedroom
Unfurnished, I called it a dance hall

And we danced silly tangos.  I tried
To lift you then, but now outside

My window, ravens dervish and never
Fly in formation, under blue mountain.

Body of ocean, milk and sky,
We are tangled in the hope of night.
The lips of the milky way, creaming us,
Stains and is **** with a taste keening;
All is creation.  My meteors crash
Into your ruptured Earth.  I flame
Upon your must and moisted furrows
And my toes are locked, rooted in yours.

Body of ocean, milk and sky,
In the deserts of the day you are true
Oasis.  The curves and waft of your sands
Seethe and sodden my barren plains,
Are erasing all my wandering memories
Of an endless sky and now your eyes
Are the only stars I know, and your skin;
A sheet that holds the heavens shimmering.

Body of ocean, milk and sky,
Your ******* are the heaving of grasses
And wind, loft and laden in the rounded
Hills, a hoard of ****** bread, bountiful,
Ripe and strange.  Your hair is an endless
Savannah, your valleys are gold and honeyed
With milk, seared, filled by my penetrating sun.
In passion we play; low on earth and deep in sky.

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.

Hazel nuts, brown leaves,
They fly in formation, last reign—
Blue drops, summer sky.

Sweetest summer day,
How I feel— she'll never know,
Words get in the way.

I took a walk with my love,
From Bray to Greystones.
Sharing smiles as we talked
Under a rainbow.

And the clouds rolled in
And the wind sprinkled rain,
Our path was etched in stone,
Along Erin's coast.

I took a walk with my love,
From Bray to Greystones.
Time unwent as we strolled
And dreamed of nowhere.

And the clouds rolled in
And the wind sprinkled rain,
Wild rushes and reeds so tall
They sheltered our way,
We moved through the day,

And suddenly,
We were two seabirds gently flying
And our souls
Were laid to rest, on the breath of heaven.

We devoted our lives,
Felt as one our spirits rising toward the sun,
Peacefully, so peacefully
And the Earth,
We felt her deep,
Undersong.

I took a walk with my love,
From Bray to Greystones.
Sharing smiles as we talked
And dreamed of nowhere.
We dreamed of nowhere.

.
He follows a win, shoddy as tin,
What a week, one sorry victory
And tales to be strewn, too thin
His climbing hill, a pyrrhic story.

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.

Backward-man loves his dog.
Ties him up before and after
His walks, likes to goad his pet
Too, speaking as the weather wails
And howls then dog looks down,
Sad on his master dumbfounded.
A chain is worn as it scrapes
The ground connecting dog
To his master.  They both love
The sound of it hissing as it strikes
The concrete pathways, sometimes
Man and dog feel free, not a part
Of each other, the chain may break,
And fear is for forks in the road,
The rusty pockmarked grip of his links
Have always been there on walks
Ahead and behind though it makes
Things confusing as if in a dance
And sometimes they wonder which way
They might end up after all—
And when the dark and golden
Rope, as always, is finally tied
To some old fruit tree, the man
Is happy his dog has both sun
And shade, but also has joy watching
Dog beg for ripe apples he cannot
Reach.  Some people might come
To think that dog thinks those apples
Are not for eating.  Everyone loves
Fruit, don't they?

Backward-man built his dog
A house as cold as a three-
Storied barn, out of things
He could not afford, things much
Too good for dog to not care
About, maybe man built dog's
House for himself, he cannot
Really impress his dog.
Backward-man likes to think
He knows what dog is saying.
Barks and whimpers have deep
Meanings, 'world is a good place,'
Dog says, but when pooch says,
'World is cruel,' crying, disobedient
Whines gets him a serious kick
Out of old anger from backward-
Man.  And man can be a hell-
Hound on his own, the way
He twists and unravels the things
He needs, like truth and food
And love— that goes without
Saying for backward-man hates
His woman, but loves his dog.

Greatest eagle, black and white,
Tell me how to reach the skies—
Wander with wind into the night,
Are you lost like me when you fly?
I see you marking the flaming sun
And want to follow your windy path,
Rising after moon, majestic one—
What trials of life in your aftermath?

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.

.
Slight words and mumbles
Mount, quiet walks together,
Arriving places unwelcomed,
Cooking for one in a kitchen
Together, over filling glasses
Of wine and wordless smiles,
Leftover stories, stale company
Endless invites for new friends,
Road trips without bend, song,
The black comedy of dull, plain,
Platitudinous days.

River, snow melt marches,
Tiny leaves, soft bells, bears early—
No salmon running.

.
The swelling brooks, so clear toned,
Rolling rounds over musical stones,

That unveil the rushed veins of May,
Race in wide cool stills, freshnesses,

Of the moistened soils overturning
And the chimes in the belled leaves,

Before they shout from buds keyed,
To syncopate in sun by bopping bees

Who buzz with jazzy pillowing waft,
Of daisy downs, in mid air to reeds,

Lips newly sprouted, banding green,
Groove myriad symphonies of colour

And the roots of trees tempo tapping,
Into waters plucked, earthy sounding,

All voice in joys with woodland birds,
Do trumpet, O what new life to come.