GATHER YE
Stealthy as a cat
Night stalks a low moon.
A philosophy of cloud and rain,
A savoured language
Where trees and rocks
Become long, slow vowels.
The wet and fallen tongues
Of petalled roses
Cleaved to bough and path
Melting into something else.
Into the night,
Peeling words
From shape of vastness
And the thick, still silence,
While this world’s half
Dreams and settles down
In a bed of time and skittered light.
Cool along with the living
And the dead, all equal
In shadowed starlight
A tide of slight passions.
Rolling tongue, a roaring
Back and forth
But not so near
As to quell
The simple comfort
Of flecked
And flickered night.
Within its quiet purr
The padding cats
And careful mice
And white flow
Of owls
And the eternal rope river
Hurrying down the valley,
Tree-clothed and glorious.
