Please don’t ask me about the
Shake in my hands,
The kicks of my legs
The pain behind my eyes.
What keeps me
In these beds, these chairs...
What made me scream in my sleep
In those first years...

Ask me how I feel
When I see a buzzard fly low
Scaling the fields with its beauty.
Ask me how I feel when I see a kingfisher
Trail blue beauty on a grey day.

Ask me how mossy rivers
Still weave a path
Around my heart. I
Feel their flow still, from here.

Ask me how I feel
When my fragile body
Sits beside them
In those precious moments
Held high against the grey.

Ask me how I feel
When blackbirds
At dusk promise beauty
Scythed feather calls
From the dark.

Ask me how I feel
When the shadows move the hills
When light shapes the dark
When the old gods call in
Winter winds.

Ask me how I feel
When I capture their image
On a sensor, when my
Heart soars with the swallows.

Blackbird song pierces the rain
A green thread of Spring,
A needle in a dark woven tapestry.
It dances through me
Beauty, flying slow, curling green
As I open my eyes to the day.

RB
16/5/17

I miss hearing the owl's call
I imagine walking to the field nearby
To wait and listen
To the winter's earthed silence
And the call that heralds the night
To feel the silent wings slice the air
And to feel the birds freedom
Calling back feathered arrows on the
Starry breeze
The sweet smell of a winters night
Fills me and I await her call.

We were built as a compass to the
Stars and the sun
The moon held us
As the earth turned.
We were raised in wildwood
Times, when fires burned
In hearts above.
Standing still, prayers still
Drip from us,
We hold your knowledge
In the turning of the sun.
RB

We have stood ship backed
Against the wind, and the rain
Our roots delve deep in the Devon soil.
Moss, and bird song protect us
We watch, we breath as the sun turns.
Our branches hold a thousand lives
Earthbound we know our songs.
Spinning endlessly under the ancient stars

What it would be to have wings
And lift oneself up
To have
Feathers jewelled like the dark,
Evergreens in the inky night.

To stretch out and hover fast
Against star led currents
And glowing thermals.

The world stretched out beneath,
Like reams of dark memory
Inscribed against iridescent feather.

And then to glide, to down soar
Landing slow, to feel earth's  winged beat
Again, and hold the feathered
Jewels against the heart.

The moon dazzled me last night,
As I woke from dreams of Saxon warriors.
Swords and shores helmed deep
Across the years.
A ship sunk In a low east hill
A helmet turns with the lunar tide.

Bodies and bone turned to sand
Empty caskets blank to the starry sky,
Warriors, lovers, beholders
Slip into their Earth.

A graveyard of ship sails and men
The tongue of a dragon whispers
And calls them from the depths
Of the river
To clear water on the other side.