simonhlilly

ENCLOSURE OF CONFLUENCE

The dead roll and slip downhill
Chasing their bouncing heads,
Big as cheeses, down to the midstream island,
Fish-shaped and floundering in summer shallows
(it not having rained a whole day yet).

A hullaballoo choired
By the black flung jackdaws
Skimming the tiles, sound bouncing
Off the echoing bells.
Low droop the days.

How jolly the dreams
Of froth and fuschia bud
Dripping red from garden walls.

So quiet as to hear every noise,
Here in the round mouth of eternity:
The splitting rock, the lichen creep,
The self-taught letters silent mouthed
Born such and such, died such and such,
A good day ended, ne’er forgot,
Bearing many loving children.

Where now our utter quiet and wild-eyed saints?
Perched on their hills, blessing miraculous waters,
Passionate for the bigness of God,
Spread winged and leaping
Into skies of echoing praise.
Turn serpent-like to the steady pilgrimage,
Our certain roads,
These small piled eggs of pure white quartz,
The sign and signature for hard days
And steady hearts – an offered hope.

All here where two streams mingle,
The inner and the outer path.
A melancholy garden, neat kept and bordered.
Beyond the quiet lanes and clean swept steps
Another place altogether
Blowsy and careless with candles and dust,
An accumulated pigment, sun faded.

The glorious stars, an ocean
Upon which a silver bowl
Of tipping moon
Will late, near dawn, arise.