Midsummer Hunt

Humid air comes rolling in,
hair-curling moisture,
fine dew upon my face,
                 inhaling the scents of
another world
    a summer world
a world heavily pregnant
amidst dark forest floors.

I have walked this Way
      every year
hunting for the hooded one
                   the hidden one
his name unnamable
save by midsummer trees.

Humidity makes me drowsy,
mind on the ground
under a stupor of heat
panting, licking cracked lips,
even the Shade is heavy–

    

then a voice on the wind! 

     his his his ... the hunted one now hunting

   hunting hard for blood and bone

  hunter down upon me
 my skin to buckskin,

hand in hand, hoof in hoof,
                     penetrating from his darkness,
all knife stare and death kiss.

Humidity swelling,
I can hardly breathe
hardly move
for the weight of him
the weight of air
weight of the world

holding me here,
heaving doe
in mud and rotten leaves,

pressing down until
    clouds burst forth with rain

all that weight
      falling
                  piercing
                                 plummeting
to the earth,
sky       rent       apart,
by lightning’s blind arrow,

hearts heave, earth growls,

wind blows back the dark endless hood
and I am his

 heart his harvest,

 soul his own. 

  

 

The Cure Lies in the Curse

I am Lot’s wife
having looked back
became a frozen stone,
a statue of salt,

but now
having stood all these years
with the rain and desert storms,
world dropping down
to the ground,
my rigid silence
dissolves into tears.

This has demanded time
and the sure-rhythmed seasons of life
to cast my eyes forward again,

knowing that 

release 

is the eventual way of all things.

  

  

 

Waking After the Storm

Morning after rain,
Earth rests in reverie,
Soaking up jeweled silence.

 

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.