You are adrift.
Like a brilliant green leaf that forsakes its branch and floats on the air,
Intricate and carefree.
The winds change, and you travel the world.
You flit from flower to sky, twist and dance.
You don't know where you're going.
You don't need to.
And me...
Well, I'm a river.
I press the ground.
I know where I am, and I know where I will be.
Nothing stops my course unless it is
Catastrophic,
Cataclysmic.
Nothing sways or bends me
Unless it is a force of Nature.
I am heavy- I bore into the earth,
Carve a path agonizingly deep and slow,
But I rush along it even though I know it leads to more of the same.
Many things pass me,
Many things touch me.
But when they touch, they stay.
They are swallowed up inside me,
Drowned at the bottom of my passion,
Swept into me and carried forevermore.
For although it takes a lightning strike to change my course,
It takes only the lightest caress to change my anatomy
And make me new.
My bones are in the riverbed,
Cold and clear, my veins rush and eddy, stretching their fingers to tangle in the treeroots,
And if you but touch me for a moment,
You are in my blood.
You scare me, because we are different.
I feel the wind when it picks up,
It kisses my face and I kiss back,
But I always stand my ground,
Even when I might desire the freedom of surrender.
It is my way:
I am a river.
Seeing you wheeling in the sky,
I am afraid.
If you follow an errant gust or passing draft
Far away from me
And over the green hills,
I cannot yank my skeleton from the ground
And uproot my veins from their stranglehold on the dirt
To follow you in your flight.
I can only watch, gouged into the soil,
As you float closer and farther away,
Land upon my rushing pulse and leave ripples that reverberate
Long after you have peeled away to investigate some new breeze.
You spin away again, here and gone,
Close and distant,
And I remain, here in the ground, pounding with the pulse of permanence.

I saw him there under the
treeroots lurking

It was dark thereunder, but he
beckoned darker

                             Still your rotting mouth
                             Shut your eldritch eyes,
                             or everywhere you'll see him

I saw him by night in
my window screaming

He had his owlface on
with eyes like
nectar-filled lamps

                            Turn away your brittle body
                            Draw the covers to your chin
                            and bear the beak in mind

I saw him on Sunday
in the churchyard digging

He laid the bones of my Father
in the wet wormsoil
for marrow cracked and clean

                            Stand still your writhen legs
                            You cast a shadow over him,
                            and he reaches up towards it

I saw him on the strand
in my lover's face seething

He took my lips in his
and breathed into me
her still beating embers

I walked the path back alone,
full of ash

I went to my knees at the altar
and tried to *****

I saw him in the steepled tower
by me standing

He opened his mouth
and whispered the words
I craved to hear

I stood over their graves
and cast no shadow