Too little time

Too tired to string the words
chivvy them into order

herd flock swarm midges they escape
into the bright air where warblers flutter

while I cling to the dying winter
wrapped in hopes fire-leaping.

The future is rushing too fast
my barque spins on the torrent
ahead the last cliff.

Badger 13

Moonlight,
elusive as
the shadow-shape along
the hedge hurrying, falls
soft as badger,
night-furred.

Gone the wind

A silence
unnatural
spills soaks up the sound
of soughing trees.

Where did the wind go with its ranting
threads of voice wolf-cried ululations
roaring chimneys keyhole-whistles?

Raced over the hill and far away

deafening-quiet
until a distant dog bells
echoing the long goodbye.

5 lines

Wind in the poplars and the oaks
branch-snapping
like the narrow necks of cranes
high in the buffeted night sky
so full of sounding dark.

Autan

Wind has blown the sun away
and strung plastic pigeon-scarers
from the boughs of unleafed trees.

First white blossom dims
in this wild light of no sky no cloud
an opalescent pall
dull as a sand-silted pearl.

Badger 12

I spy
his white striped badge
head turned to see who’s there
does he care? Badger shrugs
trundles into
the night.

Le vent d’autan

In the chimney
le vent d’autan rolls its rs
river-gravel voice shutter-rattles
baston qui fait trembler les trembles
tapageur it slams doors
la castagne batters this old house
with imminent spring.

Awakening

Something was born
in the flushed light of this morning
embraced the listening secret
that need never speak
fish-mute and as silver
moon-shining soft as first feathers.

Would we could we
make home in this woven grass nest
too big and damp for birds
with windows onto the slow painting
of landscapes tree-bowing
to the wind’s rhythmic urgings?

I remember times before
where ghosts walk now
they whisper

dance upon the green grass
dance away the dark into day.

Life and joy are not supine peaceful pleasures
but fierce as oceans wild as open skies
demanding as the voice of a newborn child.


I am posting the Oracle’s message to earthweal’s open link.

Badgers for geese and cranes

Grey geese,
first spring squadron
beats in strict formation
on the south wind’s wings, stern,
no strength to waste
honking.

Grey cranes,
sky a scribble
of winged Vs, rambling ranks,
chaotic trailing lines,
noisy, joyous
rabble.

Poem for a birthday

There was no power when we woke yesterday morning and it wasn’t reestablished until 10 in the evening, so I couldn’t post this poem for my dad’s birthday. Thought of him a lot though.

Birth endlessly repeating

Another cycle completes since you began,
and in that earth that was never yours,
you sift, settle where roots break the sod,
rain seeps carrying you deeper,

perhaps to mingle with the salt waves
that pound the long white strand,
where you imagined yourself
the child who should never have left,

sitting back to the wind
face to the ocean,

wondering if the skylark’s song,
the seal’s bark was all,
and what lay beyond
the grey horizon, a beginning
or an end.