The woman in the lake, on the island in the lake, among the trees, unseen, a gentle movement like wings, calls across the water,
to the man by the lake, who stares at the island in the lake with narrowed eyes, imagines a winged woman, trailing veils of gauze.
She calls with the voice of birds, the low guttural caress of furred things, the murmur of leaves and water,
and he hears the song of birds, the bark of a hind, the lapping of lake water, the wind in the leaves, but not what they say,
because the moon is rising and will set in the west, the stars point their bright fingers towards the place,
and the trees shake their hair in the wind that ruffles the water of the lake, roosting blackbirds cluck uneasily, ruffle-feathered.
Go back, says the woman on the island in the lake, to your bloodied halls, the clash or arms, the coarse laughter of your men. By your side is no place for me.
The man by the lake, wades deeper through the reeds, through the rising wind and the night birds’ cries, and he shouts at the night, at the woman’s moon,
his bitter words of women’s faithlessness, his empty threats, while the moon rises, the waves rise, and push him homeward in the laughter of the wind.
This is what came from the first set of words this morning. I think it is anyway. It’s not like the Oracle’s usual style and I don’t even remember writing it. Brain is very blurry with this thing I’ve got.
Rain
Petals open beneath the rain, flowing into cupped flower bowls, running over, seeping, sinking, among root systems we never see, too intent on the sky, the clouds, a day ruined.
Nothing seeks entertainment the way we do, infinite technological possibilities, and we worship only the sun, unimaginative as potatoes, the stones in the road.
In the drip-drip of drops from glistening leaves, bending grass stalks and the swaying heads of buttercups, birds sing.
Come hell or fescue-high water, birds sing, filling tree-sails, rocking on the ocean swell of damp meadows.
Birds skim, food-questing, chick-feeding, abseiling the slanting shafts of rain, hawk-like, when mice scurry.
Life lives, broad and wild, while we sit, glum, despondent, picking through the bright insect-rapid fluttering on a tiny screen.