1
 
Grey sky greyer sea
a litter of rocks balance
coat bright hat blue mittens striped
as on these November steps
you collect the gifts of the ebb tide
 
2
Glint green this living tapestry echoes
Jilly’s field with tractor not Devon
but salt-flats rocky revetments moorland rising
a map crossed by a chiromatic line
our destiny marked out on this concrete wall?
 
3
Beached clinkered double-ender
a bay-courser sjekte strand-crunched
fit once for Viking raiders two abreast
now daubed with tin ends of patriotic paint
a sea-steed hobbled ******* the shore
 
4
Bow faced a sea helmet thrice rope strapped
slow moulded over the boat builder’s ribbanded jig
a spanglehelm of wood
curved sheer straked plank bilged a tuck stern
raising its proud head seaward
 
5
Viewed from the air a map rolls out
north to the tilted curve of the horizon’s rim
cloud scattered mountained red
betwixt seas sun chalked wine-stained a volcanic isthmus
provokes desert the western waste land of  a brooding city
 
6
Oh face of ropes knot eyed!
you blue cheeked wide smiler
wild wild your  head of hair
beachcombed and splayed
wrapped on the sternest post
 
7
She sewed sugar kelp on the sea shore
a sporophyte with sheltered frond​
strap-like stem stiff and smooth
of the species saccharina a spring-tide
stalk set among substrates shells and stones
 
8
I the camera turned and caressed
by her slight fingers (the pinky raised)
my viewfinder close to her blue grey eye / I
focus on this kelp-needled novelty feel her breath
wait for the thumb press the electronic click
 
9
Here is the beach walked in darkness
the fishermen shadows against the moonstruck ebb
fingers laced the sea’s breath in our ears
wave upon wave un-folding on the sand and  later
we unfold then draw back in love’s relentlessness

It is a Russian dish, they say.
A plate of two diecious moons
Rising on different waters.
They reflected a common bond:
The mushroom sauce that
Goes with anything unmushroomy.

One side was a pile of rice,
Yellow fleshy seedlings, brown
Chunky gravy for headtops.
They mountained over like uneven Alps.
They kissed the air, like good army boys
And rose their spice to dance firely

Within me. They spoke a foreign tongue,
That deciphered itself in my mouth.
The credibility lies somewhere my love, but try
Finding a speck of truth in a death full of lies.
It was painful to hear its story,
The way it winces and rolls over to convince you.

Being genuine is something special, sacred.
It can’t be too hard. Just when my fork
Scooped up a bite, the lambs started hooing.
They were in juicy threes, each with
A bone and a bit of marinated flesh.
They smelled like grazed greenlands.

It is something else with mint sauce
But I hate it. Truthness lies somewhere
In the nervous system of its body,
That is bloodless and tender. They too, attempted
To lull me with an anecdote, fallibly in its juices.
The grain and meat are proud godfood
      with histories tailing like dreams.

Whom should I consume and believe? They
Withered and tempted me like a candystore does
To bored children. It is too agonizing, I’ve become
The middle woman. Two moons, jaundiced and stony
Stared back boney, and sick. The overcrowded trash
Had acquainted two odd friends that night.

Shalini Nayar
(c) 2002

He fell from his crucifixion

Pure in his scars

Mountained on his sternum

From the moments

Words were trapped

Behind the dam of his cave

So he continued silent

In sacrifice for her happiness

an akin, crimsonshaded, thine Männlein whom walks, in flower fields of sunnysided, uppeth of meadows, reddish glay over the fabric of barefoot felt grass.
an akin Männlein, sherry of hope, lost in a positive o,
of tender disorientation,
a diving swim, into the ocean of flora.
as then cometh the blue rain, nutrition of soil.
  thee Earth-Mother whom weeps the Magnifique rays of joyful tears,
   cleansing our rooted hair of darkest, green leaves.
our happiness at ease, at rest, the Männlein guideth the path in plural lonliness.
aesthety' of sorrow, saddened laugh, glossing over us, as I,
  as me, myself and we, as a post raincloud rainbow.
  . . . beauty be christa, crystalled thy castle, her and herself. in our notioned, discovered a chrestomathy, in fairy dust the Männlein bathes,
   for the blind dea as a hearts passage.
  the dea, be love, being compassion,  companionated, traveled passenger alongside, the christa of vision, no matter the darkness eternal.
  Männleins, a plural loneliness, being happy, and to a'no less,
  nevertheless, and to a'no matter, shall be a metamorphism, into bonded singularity of two. never to become the dark, on a hill topped meadow field.
   eternity being Doe, the deer, a doubled horn in a forest, of no seareeds, no labyrinth of trees, a clear flower grass rag over a pure, moist soil, a livelyhood mud that is no longer faced darkened black.
   the Männlein walketh as two, together as ever, the red ray of fire, the meadow ray of soil, turned to our sun, the blind dea of the Earth-Mother,
   christa be Doe, a deer, we have seen the creation in words, phonetic.
    as we follow time, follow a nature, an adornment, shall we be as the Männlein?
    a mankind? an akin kind of human? our blind dea as compassion, an'n twey we have met, we shall, we may... we can be, must be the apostle of the deer, our spirit a Doe.
    The Männlein wanderer in a spring, atop the mountained hill, he be a hillflower itself, red as with Agape, deepeth his labyrinth'd heartcorner . . .
    so'th we have helped them found, an akin man'nkin, the allcreation, of dearest christa. so'th we have walked, where they have walked, in a sunnysided uppeth, yellowjacket meadows the field, barefooted on in grassy, wet soil, walked, along. as an Ardor of tin.