Amidst the Damson Trees

Out here,
amidst the damson trees,
there is another time beyond time.

I gather fruit,
one basket, then another,
but feel the closing in of otherness.

tree roots descend down,
down into the hidden layers of life,
like a mist

Out here,
amidst the damson trees,
memories speak and secrets flow.





 
 

(Be)Coming Home

Everyone is a little heartsick or homesick,
looking to belong to
their own humanity

like cattle to the land
or birds to the sky.

It’s as if by sweat and love and
long years’ journeying,
we aspire to find the secret of our species,

what it means to be alive,
to be utterly, totally
human.

I left home when still a child,
seeking out my own place
in the pattern of things,
holding the space between
broken and whole.

But now,

time to walk forth into the gap
between who we think we are
and who we’re meant to be,

centre of gravity shifting like
sands from underfoot

never coming home, but becoming home,
one step closer to the humanity
we’ve been all along.

  

  

Love Even More

There is such a yearning in me tonight,
a burning to look into the
face of another
and reaffirm my own humanity.

It’s as if the whole world
is being born
in the darkest confines of
my heart

until I am left
with no other choice
but to

love even more.

Nesting

I should have known
all along that
it wasn’t about him or
you.

It was about winter versus summer,
the way a storm fills the air with terror and
pure electric joy,
and how my heart could not contain

two dreams, two loves, two futures
without a future of my own.

Shadow danced with sunshine
until I hardly knew which was which–
love has a funny way of blurring all the edges

and making psychosis the unconscious hero.

You were me and I was him and we three were one, then two, then none.

Crazed with longing, I
abandoned the border of half-felt dreams
and journeyed to a far country,
red and fair,
until I found my face in the water and the wind.

Then I knew
it wasn’t about him or
you.

It was the cry of one lonely owl hunting for her nest
before being caught by the rising dawn.

  

 

The Edge You Are

I love you like the edge you are,
hard and breathless, senses intimate with disaster,
and hung half way between heaven and earth.

If I just let go of your precipice,
then I would fall heart-first into the ocean of love,
overwhelmed in waves, un-making my soul.











  

Mangy Dog

Mangy dog humping the earth,
his black-red eyes follow me like sword to heart.

At first he was just -– a dog,
but then he said my name, over and over
one hundred thousand times at once,
the force of his knowing like a thunder-
bolt in the belly.

How many nights must he hunt me,
nose raised to entrap my essence,
so that sweat fouls the sweetness
and all my fetid carcasses are undug
from the soil of my soul.

No muzzle or chain can contain him.
He is far too wild for training.

Mangy dog, humping the ground,
his shadow stands guard at the edge
where both known and unknown fall
before his rapacious maw.

  

Time Is A Pack Mule

Time is a pack mule,
bad-tempered to boot,
his master a gypsy, slightly tipsy
but still all suave and slick-haired flourish,
a bargain of colour for every passerby
who is subject to his seductions and pleas,

cloths unrolled across the fareway,
travellers forced to stop and stare,
or step around in the mud

green copper banded with tarnished plate,
elixers and fixers unlabeled (untried!),
bells missing tongues like ghosts en situe,
but worst of all, a sin for his kind!--
violins unstrung . . . unsung.

"Ahh" he leans in closer with a gaze,
eyes as embers from some everlasting flame
in a field of night, but without delight.
"I only sell the instruments--
          --not the souls,"

face solemn with foreign knowledge.
"If you want their soul,
seek the madman with his steed,

he it was who first dare string 

          the devil's fiddle,
a fiddle so full of human desire
it was strung from fine golden hair and sinews of heart
life ripped from her lips
from her he loved best."

Then at your dismay, the gypsy laughs

a wildfire of despair glowing in his veins,
and at last he pulls it out

          that fiddle of hell
strings silken as hair, golden and pure,
and yet red as blood beating in the ear,

          that fiddle of heart
crazy, revolting, and utterly alive.

Bone finger to fiddle,
      he strikes up an air
that sinks into the pit of your heart like a stone, 

shackles of longing long lost form anew,
as gypsy once man now melts into mule.