Mountain Storm

storm brewing in Snowdonia, N. Wales -- Mynydd Mawr is nearby

There is rain tonight in the valley,
     rivers running off course
and even the wind has missed its directions,
          leaves stuck in my hair,

eyelashes kept open to the gale,
     forced breath, light dip but no depth
          beneath the panting weight of
               slanting
cloud come down around the very feet of
Mynydd Mawr, the Great Mountain,

roads washed out into fields,
barring the way instead of leading home,

while black cattle hang their calls
     on a hawthorn--little shelter in its spines,
     while my refuge is the gorse, golden but
hardly more protection than the forlorn thorn in the field.

Bare foot, shivering, soaked to my very spirit,
there is no turning back for even the wild things,
no relief until the relentlessness slackens with its own
weariness, wondering that perhaps it has had enough
of itself, just as a child cries out its woe
until there are no more tears to be had.

     Until then, I will wait,
struck by the adamant intent of a landscape to survive,
even in the face of a storm which knows no difference
between fence and field, woodland or mountain heath,
only its own release into the world
     like my words now dropping on all alike,

tawny owl taking what belongs to it,
each poem agile in stealth, waiting for you
     in the dark night of dissolution
to steal you beyond death into

          clouds parting, sun gleaming,
and the whole world glistening anew
on fire from
        seeing itself once more. 

  

  

 

She Arises

Blood thumps in my ears,
a drum I cannot drown out
for all my drinks and devilment.

Quivers my body, an arrow ready strung,
aimed at the bulls-eye of knowing
there is no escape from her,
the woman crying alone in the bathroom,
sick at the cycled sight of vomit,
even her own body rejecting her.

How did the mind go crazy?
Nothing sensible, sense blown to dust,
am I who? —
–- ”Another shot, double quick.”

In the shrunken horror of a glimpse,
I cannot do this anymore.
Hands paralytic, the glass no longer rises,
as heaviness insults my suicidal hopes,
a flame fueled by recollection,
spark in my dimming sight screams

“You can do it … just … let … go.”

Whiskey medicine wasted on the floor,
glass like diamonds cuts away my fears
as I fall 

falling into the street, panting, breath eludes the lungs,
homeless, drifting, warmth ungrips his hand from my head

I am cold, so so cold
on these cobblestones, crying tears I'm beginning to feel,
running down my face into the gutter
  lips pressed into the bottom of the world,
kissing, blue, crawling, face a-light

like a toddling child
who has just discovered world as mother

and above me, oh above -–
there are stars, thousands of stars,
pinpricks of light arising from death’s drunken maw.

Mother, help me live again.