Another star poem:
NIGHT PATTERNS
Looking tonight
It was a child’s game,
A peasant’s carpet.
Patterns of light
Stuck on the slow swing
Of the sky’s bowl.
Refusing to flee farther
Than over the rooftops,
Beyond the field.
Try as I might
They adhere to old
Cosmologies:
Telling stories,
Whispering names,
Herding seasons.
Yet
One spark from a star
Lodged fast in my soul.
A splinter of light,
Lost tombed in my eye.
Quick burin of night
Engraving my brain.
As I lie now
Echoes sift
The skull’s dome.
Suspended
From a million threads
I turn slowly, slowly,
About a still Pole
Whose name is mine.
————-
Followed by another night poem:
NIGHT RAIN, SUMMER RAIN
Ripening moon
Warming breath
Through race of wind
Sharp scent of stars
Rain-grass taste
Blue supper
Black towers
On whistling wheels
Wing, scud
Trundle
Timewards.
With their first lick
Our Lady’s sides shiver
Embraced in shouts
She melts and fades
As night rains
So silk fish leap,
Flash and ripple
On the water’s face
But She swings
Like silver
Wings
Like silver bell
Around the dark dome
Rings
Sings
Shakes light
Sinks shrouded
———
Followed by two poems of waking:
HUNG AS A HAWK
Hung
As a hawk
On the cross-beams
Of tick-tock
Spliced
By light
With the blackbird’s
River
A slim wedge
Pricks this
Bubble bright
All-swirl
The riddle orb
Cascades.
The shadow flock
Leave whispers:
Pool worlds
Flash and floating
High and dry
Leavings
Purchased with oceans-
This blanket demesne
Whose senses
Night’s scythe
Dismembered
Strewn grains
They sprout
Strong cauldron
Tinker tailor
Whets and sews
Resurrection
Nerve and sunbeam
Weld the spark
To Jolly Roger’s
Skull and bones
Ahoy!
The Last Trump!
The Seven Citied Isle!
The five floodgates
Open.
R.I.P
Drowned
In daylight.
THE SHELL’S SONG
So long lost,
Save what is saved
For the brave wave’s winnowing.
Cast on the drift,
Drowned in the deep oh,
Drawn down in sleep,
Slip the fathoms,
The far fathoms fine.
Tumble slow in motion,
Heels over head,
And leave to care
The coves and caves,
The sloping sand
Losing time in tides:
Each beach that speaks
The long waves reach.
Breathe green for aye
The deeps
No eye
Has seen.
Sink in seven seas:
The eighth ocean
Where fishes kiss
These fingertips-
The slow shoals
Of sweet dream.
Where stars fish
The deep green dream of hue,
The skein of scale,
Glimmer shimmer of tail.
The sigh
And sough of sea
Within the shell’s siren ear.
Sigh and sough,
Sigh and sough.
Now
Fish the sea’s eye
And rise on tide’s wings.
The wind-washed world
Calls the length of leagues
To the seaweed tangle
Of your thought.
Bleached shell
Rolls a line to and fro
And rising,
Floating,
Sleep ebbs away.
Eyes closed:
The shingle sounds
Of day.
——–
