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.

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

.
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.

Fairground cherry trees,
Childrens' pink balloons popping,
  .  .  .  Windy petals burst.

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.

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

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.

Red edging needles, pine
On blue mountain, nostrils
Of elk smoke with a bulls
Eye, scarlet stares of steely,
Steepled raven, snow drifts,
White fires in the lighted sky.

In my garden, feral and overgrown,
I bear with branchings of the apple,
Hunched and grey, laden with fallow
Fruits, the tired, knottted fingers die
Each year, under which are baubles
Of sourness and stray, poorly drawn
Circles of fodder even hungry deer
Will not graze upon.  The elder tree
Slowly casts itself into Bonsai stone.

Down a valley, in the grades of sun,
Lay a stand of madrones in redden
Fire, with deepest eyes of burnished
Green leaves, some immortal Gorgon
So beauteous, in form and branches
Divine, of Olympian flame, held, atop
Heavenly escarpments by the loving
Skies.  I see it for what it is, my love,
Your body and hair, so tawny, so fair,
Though, ever lost to me but in dream,
Are dearly those red branches, a fable,
Your eyes, green as sea, those leaves.

.
Tangles of vine, wisps of thorn,
Roping a rocky face of granite,
High, on a hill are drops of sky,
Green hands cradle purple beads
Of the sun, whose skin is frosted
In water vail, morning days' dew
Has come, birds and bees singing
Songs to hum anew, this offering
All to ancient invitations of spring,
There will be wine and flower laid,
Before rise of moon or day is done.

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.

Lone piper in pub—
Guinness waiting to be poured,
Blarney and glad dirge.

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.”

.
Light sparkles in the clover,
Yellow and blurr of bees
Are honeyed in the sun
And robins have come,
Yanking in the gasses,
So green is the moisten
Of the painting of the dew
And all is lolling in petrichor,
The soils running with slow
Time so shortly experienced,
Oils of wood permeate the air,
Lapping brooks bream into light,
The loft kestrel swirls in meadow
And chipmunks scuttle at base of tree,
Even the wind does freshly quiet, crisply,
There as a hug waiting for body and spirit,
Patches of white are disappearing, they know—
That one day we must all return, after winter snows.

I remember that day on Mount Tamalpais.
We picnicked under the loving sky
On Bolinas ridge, atop Wicklow hill,
The maiden’s breast.  We found those apple trees,
Who’d gone wild and fell into their world.
A blossom on the way.

I took your picture and you developed into
A sea-horse, or was it a mermaid?  The ridge
Was foaming about you and birds were swimming
Like fish underneath.  We found a tree, an umbrella
Left at the beach.  The coral-grass became our bed
And wine turned into water.

A spiral dance in arms of anemone, it was
All embrace!  That reef was spawning heaven.
At the treasure chest under the sea maiden,
Like children on highland pap, we played
At the beach that day in a castle above the clouds,
Beneath the wave.

.
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 colourless 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?
.

Wild poppies swaying,
Her long red hair unbridled,
  .  .  .  Tantric was the dance.

Hollow is the rube  .  .  .
To be bereft of one's soul,
  .  .  .  What a pure mindfuck.

I stack the round stones
From the river, my sculpture grows—
Crow will knock it down.

Beach walking alone.
Never, short as Donegal strands,
Endless— without her.

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.

River gift, flowing upstream and down
Cresting with the bumpy waters tow,
Slick as an eel, you move and fro to play,
Warm in the gleaming sun that rides
With you each day,

                              you have shone, great
Knowledge of salmon, found the pearl
In the dark mussel, bend as even light
Must, piercing the waters of the under-
World, lording the fey, riparian borders,
Like a God.

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.

Under the primrose stars, the lovers
Lie abed, on green, threadbare croft
Of sleeping daisy, clover and moss,
Trails with hushed air, an embroidery
So fine as to stitch blushing heart fall
And wrap the waters full of stillness
In graces, winding, soft, granulating
Time, wings flutter and hum, winsome
Sparks, fire white, flying as little suns
Burst confetti, in sweet encampment,
Of grass and sapling wood, innocents,
Charmed are wholly twining, in moon
Rise a lantern to the winking heavens,
Out of their skins they are climbing.

Her lips misty moist  .  .  .
Spring bursting purple lilacs,
  .  .  .  Ripe aureolas.

Dreams lost when waking,
Sea spray, tangled kelp wafting,
  .  .  .  Briny taste of her.

Her languid voice
Drew me in, drooped,
And tentacle hair wrapping,
My feet fell before hers,
Sinking in the faraway lost pool,
The mortality in the sands,
And even the stars, snuffed
Out of darkness and fire
Became the light of the world,
The hushed day breaking
With welling waters and salt.
How can dream be lived,
Within dream?  Must I swear
As I fall into bliss?

Feathers twitching twigs,
Leaves drop, black cat rustling,
Gnomes in the garden.

Snow covers valley—
Solitary raven staining world,
Love has turned black.

Libertarians—
Anarchists on a trust fund,
Fools with conviction.


Only right country,
Libertarian heaven—
  .  .  .  Sweet Somalia.


Regulations ****—
Breathing is free and easy,
With Chinese gas mask.


John Wayne was a God,
We act with guns for Jesus—
Vengeful, cold dead hands.

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 she 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."

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.

Wine, spinning, we dine,
Candles and moon making love,
.  .  .  Sparkle in her eyes.

Snow covers valley—
Solitary raven staining world,
Love has turned black.

Lost in dream forest,
One cloud drifting in blue sky,
Still searching for her.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Silent pond ripples—
She dips her toes in water,
Soft *******, stiffen.

Snow covers valley—
Solitary raven staining world,
Love has turned black.