Bells chime.
The world is a pale imposter of itself,
gray in the moonlight,
but not indifferent.
Coy perhaps, complicit.
In league with me, perhaps.

The paper birch trees shuffle aside,
in line like ghostly sentinels,
and the briars curl back in black swarthy masses
to clear a path,
mumbling a song in their old forgotten language,
each leaning toward me, toward my house,
pointing the way.
A faint glimmer, light ahead,
yes, the warm glow of firelight
beneath the moss and stone of the highland hills.

Distant laughter, the *****! of glasses and
bell chimes.
The susurrations of the nighttime grasses
whisper in time with the tunes of my fiddlers;
they know the songs of my blood, my bones.

Come to my house in the hills – yes, you must come!
We will dance as the swallows do,
as the daisies do when the winds blow,
and watch the walls and faces
blur into one another as we spin round and round,
swapping faces, swapping bodies.
The other guests wear garments of wanderlust and daring,
and their dance is one of flame and dust.

Come!
Dance within my house,
between walls of polished ivory
and a ceiling studded with pearls and diamonds
and the teeth of extinct animals.

Come!
We are free here:
free to forget,
free to deny.
Free, at last, to revel in the revelry
and be as unwise as it pleases us to be.
Here is a place where wisdom
is useless and none
will accuse you of sensible conduct.

And after,
when the sunlight tosses me back into the ocean
and hauls you out
dream of me.