.
The red-headed woodpecker drums,

Drilling hollow life into old pine tree,

Insects scurry in dance of spiral daze,

Robins waiting for the grubby entrails.

.
The mountain lily crowding,
Grassy glens in formal dress,
After snows and early spring—
Rain over all the green hillsides,
An earthly heaven of constellation,
Daybreaks into marvelous milkyway.

I came to a courtyard of my own making,
To a cottage by the sea at the worlds edge.
I furnished it with my left over life, complete,
Barren and colorless and I wrote the newest
Book of psalms out of tinder and flame, a tome
Of grey and useless poems, unheard of songs
And reams of flesh.  There in the lightest dark,
By the Druid stone that was placed just for me,
I planted a creeping yew tree.  And the moon
Sang in celebration and silence like a fallen
Priest.  
                    Under the covering hazel trees,
That sprung to life after the longest winter,
Which taught me to forget my name, I now
Struggle with light and my body, warring, torn
Is fading slow, like the always arriving, down
Turning solstice, the climates of the mind,
Where it is digging the never ending shallow
Hole only the spreading eternal yew, that I
Planted, will ever know and only the Lazarus
Moon shall ever rise above.

I came to a courtyard of my own making,
Was it dream that led me there or my eyes?

Seashells and castles,
Imagination, holy as the skies,
Sea sprayed our faces.

In rows like crumpled paper set,
The way one might design a brooch,
There sets a sparkle down so purely
Capital, beyond reproach and sure
She is the blackest flea who sits
Upon an old green dog, now should

You query, her name's a pond.  In Gaelic
It's pronounced: Baile Átha Cliath—
But in Irish she's plain, mightily named,
Dublin.  Where broods the dove, linnet
And swan.  Now take them pi'jons, they got
Dank habits and linnets lament the silent

Stones.  Sure, the goose gave out and took
To the air, but the swans, they've landed,
To roost, enchanted as 'Children of Lir,'
And so becomes a changeling child's
Fair city, for in her anointed proximity,
Gracious white birds do bathe and molt,

Supplied as I can tell, she looks black-
Pooled in clusters, long side her creases.
Stout nectar flows in near every nook
And cranny, but yer man, he's never
Busy, that malty fish, daftly avoids,
Swimming spirals round like buggies

Do on petals, he'd rather grace gardens
By drinking their dew.  O Dublin town,
She wends her ways and rows her houses
Round-a-bout on cobbled shores in tribute
To sprite, deary and fey, Anna Livia—
Who like a stem of blood, stabs right

To the heart of Dublin Bay— and proud
As a crowned thorny, who once had reeked,
She's bloomed large, into one grandeous
Beauty, like a céilí so finely fiddled—
A sandy, spirited, bombastic beach-
Flower, she is, a flag so fitting upon

The doons.  In dream, I flocked to her
Like the wild geese and saw her coy'd
Repose and there I spied, from mackerel
Skies— one monstrous, Irish rose!

.
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.
.

Under the muted bark of hazelnut trees,
Spurious, sprite juncos scurry in vertigo,
Pecking, replete bouncing downy knees,
Grounded, tuft, constellation of Scorpio.

In braze, silent breeze of dreams incantations,
Shiva arms sway in the forest dark, mushroom,
Cloud, lord with fungi, mosses whose clinging
Shades of branches, braids deep, forking stories
Of old, brooding cauldron Druids, sidles Eastern
Spindrift words of Sanskrit spake, told in veined
Sacred hands unfound, celestial spines, moulded
Green, in the windy monkish statutes of the fallen
And single handed claps of the missionary leaves.

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.

.
A tin cat plays guitar on the fires mantle,
The Eiffel tower is knitted to the wall
And trade paper books are loosely strewn,
Dropped about the french coffee table.
The poet, pearling with snowcapped eyes,
Filtering words on ivory keys he knows
The burled wood piano is not yet playing.

Aspen, stands by river,
Shouting out the noonday sun,
Dwarfed by foothill mountains.

Wings, whirl, blue green psalm,
Collapsed wave function flashes—                                                         ­           
.  .  .  Into existence.

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.

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.

She showed me her song,
Fresh voice like water to flower,
  .  .  .  My shut heart opened.

In plain sight, the Peacocks ply their wearisome
Colours.  Awkwardly swaying, pompously preening,
They cry to be seen, their voices are gurgling  
And gawking.  The direction of wind is their vane.

Overhead, in the secret sky fleet wings are truth.
In the sun the searing Falcon is seeing all;
His talons turn and steal away, they are mad,  
Playful fingers— they will have their say.


*— after W. B. Yeats

Eight hours of work, eight hours must I sleep,
I can only weep, I realize my life is passing by,
Oh O O O Om . . .
My life gets in the way of living.

Creative people try and lonely people sigh,
I can only weep, I realize my life is passing by,
Oh O O O Om . . .
My life gets in the way of living.

    Travels I would make, cause my heart to break,
    For misery and ecstasy are one.
    Tibetan book of the dead, red rivers I have bled
    And temple walls, they speak of—

My life gets in the way of living.

Years spent in school, we learn but never do
And if you have a woman, or a man,
Your life is spent, by a factor of ten,
Oh O O O Om . . .
My life gets in the way of living.

He gave her his love,
Salt of her tears— shining gift,
Both heaven and earth.

My tears fall like leaves  .  .  .
In windy autumn she left—
  .  .  .  Old oaks cry with me.

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.

Treasure in forest,
Water dropping crystal beads—
Dew on wild orchids.

No peace in empire  .  .  .
Blind surveil themselves freely,
  .  .  .  Perpetual war.

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.

Dazed, infusions of hate,
Swineherd is dirtiest of pigs,
******* Limbaugh rush.

Tea and cup, ready,
Birds in garden weaving dream,
Kettle wakes, calling.

Songbirds listening—
Her voice, fresh in my garden,
Wind chimes grew silent.

Wheels of wind, snow drifts,
Robes of highest order sway,
  .  .  .  Tibetan plateau.

Gone, my mistress of the long dark hair
And the ravens, still, as always remain
Silent, as the flight of the horned owl
Deep in the tangle of black mountains.

In rows like crumpled paper set,
The way one might design a brooch,
There sets a sparkle down so purely
Capital, beyond reproach and sure
She is the blackest flea who sits
Upon an old green dog, now should

You query, her name's a pond.  In Gaelic
It's pronounced: Baile Átha Cliath—
But in Irish she's plain, mightily named,
Dublin.  Where broods the dove, linnet
And swan.  Now take them pi'jons, they got
Dank habits and linnets lament the silent

Stones.  Sure, the goose gave out and took
To the air, but the swans, they've landed,
To roost, enchanted as 'Children of Lir,'
And so becomes a changeling child's
Fair city, for in her anointed proximity,
Gracious white birds do bathe and molt,

Supplied as I can tell, she looks black-
Pooled in clusters, long side her creases.
Stout nectar flows in near every nook
And cranny, but yer man, he's never
Busy, that malty fish, daftly avoids,
Swimming spirals round like buggies

Do on petals, he'd rather grace gardens
By drinking their dew.  O Dublin town,
She wends her ways and rows her houses
Round-a-bout on cobbled shores in tribute
To sprite, deary and fey, Anna Livia—
Who like a stem of blood, stabs right

To the heart of Dublin Bay— and proud
As a crowned thorny, who once had reeked,
She's bloomed large, into one grandeous
Beauty, like a céilí so finely fiddled—
A sandy, spirited, bombastic beach-
Flower, she is, a flag so fitting upon

The doons.  In dream, I flocked to her
Like the wild geese and saw her coy'd
Repose and there I spied, from mackerel
Skies— one monstrous, Irish rose!

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.

A tin cat plays guitar on the fires mantle,
The Eiffel tower is knitted to the wall
And trade paper books are loosely strewn,
Dropped about the french coffee table.
The poet, pearling with snowcapped eyes,
Filtering words on ivory keys he knows
The burled wood piano is not yet playing.

Aspen, stands by river,
Shouting out the noonday sun,
Dwarfed by foothill mountains.

Seashells and castles,
Imagination, holy as the skies,
Sea sprayed our faces.

Moonlit waters creep—
Bare feet, hands held, old crescents,
Lake shores, loneliness.

Pond mist milky cream,
White butterflies frothing stir,
  .  .  .  Coffee at first light.

His hands ring in the upper classes.
There, in the morning light, his will
Is forged, bent, as truth, on ruling  
This place, underhand, underfoot.

With shuttered ears divining his voice
The dim pupils see only what is said.
The top hand schools, topples all words
Ringing hands sing the song of fools.

How Headmaster trains on the heel,  
A dagger strikes, the paper cuts
Exalted, his close minded hands,  
See a Czar in the stony swagger,

And the student body, submissively lies
With his feet.  Outside the college
The headmaster is heard. Grossly,
He is their dream and only shepherd.

Olympian flame—
What heights I climbed to know her,
Clouds in my blue eyes.

Pond lilies basking,
Misty buds of sleepy rain,
  .  .  .  Water envelopes.

The Blue Falcon, cross the spire,
Waits in the gables of the white
House.  Wounded in youth by crush
Of air, spent, a wisp perched
In the aerie dark with a view of mountains
Blue as ice under glacier.  The wooden
Church from the other side clutches
The sky but the Falcon blue is lost
In a tuft of cloud that bobs but never
Kills.  On this strike he is sheathed in stealth
The dull talons slip as they dry
In the tented air, the songbirds at play
In the high-ground underneath warble
And chide but the Falcon cannot hear
The Falcon near.  His heart is soft
And muted in the breast, his ears
Are dumb to their tickling-songs.  

Before the Falcons time, over
The tilling fields, dropped his world
In the spoils where splendour burst in green,
Rain meant the feathers ran and the woods,
A banquet of game, were bounty's breach
Fording blue currents he was
A fisher in the sun, but the sun
Sank in his drowning sky no store
From plateau to quarry the drought of days
Moved a castle felled in the dancing
Dust, his wings broke in the shuttered
Eye of the sun and etched his form
Into grey silhouette.  

Now, the Blue Falcon, jeered
In the branches of the rooted air
Above the yellowed grass, under the pines
And a great blue mountain, stirs a Druid
Shape, vaporous, in the cauldron
Of the attic in the white house
A throw of stones crossways from
The sacred yews of the steeple spire.