Songbirds in bushes
Sing love to lowly gardens
Choirs from heaven

Dance with me
Awaken dragon
This fire burns equally
Between you and me
Pulse pounding core throbbing
I dance for you alone
You take me apart
With your fiery words
Inferno heart
To my candle soul
Take your pleasure
And give me mine own
This love richer
Than a dragon's hoard
Shining bright in the sky
Like twin suns
Among the stars
Of an alien planet
Swords gleaming
In your light
I dance
Hell hath no fyre
Like a dragon in love.

I must read!**
For the words that drift across my consciousness
--lights that pierce dull eyes--
are not of my own creation;
they are spoken by the celestial voices of time,
and time immemorial.

I receive these graces bountifully,
the more and more I ravenously consume
pages upon pages of genius:

The jongleurs who entertained in the king's courts
and danced and sang in His Majesty's presence,
The alchemists who toyed with heretic incantations
and cauldrons full of curses in their gloomy dens,
The madmen and women who succumbed to madness
and therefore in turn were blessed by madness,
The monks who sat hunched over fading scrolls
and interpreted scripture in the ancient libraries,
The scribes who sharpened their tools
and carried their stone tablets like a cross.

I must write, yes,
but first I must read.

Night equals day equals night;
The march of hours pauses,
poised in tranquility
as the waning season cedes
to its successor -
with each passing day spinning
like a cosmic pirhouette
whirling about the solar axis.

The oracle of autumn
prophecies the coming snow and ice.
So we gather in our grain
and fire up a *** of tea
to share before the hearth.

The solstice descends upon us
as we burrow in with friends and kin.
But even as the frozen ground
crackles beneath our boots,
we trust the ever-whirling earth
to stretch the days once more
and raise spring flowers from their sleep.

*October 14, 2015