Selected Poems and Excerpts

Three Excerpts from Birnam Wood

The Queen's Dream

At night I rose as if to walk the town.
My feet were bare. My hair strayed down
And tiny winds took strands aloft.

Upon the cobbled streets I found a crowd
All moving toward the edge of town.
We passed a gate and here the paving ceased.
Ahead a pasture opened to the east.
There roamed a herd, a shepherd cloaked in grey
And by his side a black dog stayed.

The dog was wolfish lean and keenly lithe
And like the springing shadows of the trees.
He turned on me, as if he caught the scent
Of prey and flashing through the meadow fresh
I fled and with his snapping breath arrived
Beneath the oaks and climbed. The limbs were chill
And tore my gown, my hands, and still I knew
The way to reach the upper boughs and driven
By the leaping beast ever just below my feet
I reached the crown and for one moment
Drew a ragged breath
And then I knew that it had caught me.
I knew I'd never leave;
Never lose the beast again.
Its jaws were now the swiveled branches of the tree;
My mind its airy territory.

The Song of the Forest

Obdurate and mean, the way of hate
That hews and fells. O human hells of greed
That grate away the peace of windy breaths
And breed a host of early deaths and pests
Of need unleashed by fear, O uneasy dears,
Listen now, a sound so common and so near,
The trees, the trees will speak and sing.

Rumble darkly, breath of bark and humble
roots; you wake new shoots.
Earth, farraginous bag of birth,
Lift and fall with breath, with all the shifts
Of substance settling — the pain of parting's
Heavy in your long skin. We bevy
Into leaves and buds your sorrow: blinking
Thousandfold– the blooms, the bold brows
Of branches. We swallow every fallen sorrow
And break that knotted bulk with flossy quakes
Of sunsap, bright as filaments, slightly spun
In spiral motion, the sweetest potion-fire,
And all succumb to its hum, enthralled.

Water with its pummel shifts the matter
Scatters pieces, ceases after
Ruptures, gashes, streams and flashes sculpture
Worlds of masses, sashes whirled
Of ceaseless washes; water tosses, teases,
Fractures lifeless structures, rifles factions,
And fills the globes, the lobes of cells
Responsive, slippery with whispers, constant
Transfers; water traces, soft and dancelike,
Life and ruptures rootless structures, slices
Like a master, each conceit with its disaster.
What is forced will fall will fail.
The holy life is the only grail.

Tweet and toll upon the folds of fleeting
Winds that bend and hurl, wend and spin
From pole to pole and hot to cold, and blow
Inchoate, empty arms and empty moans:
No bone, no form, no cup, no cornerstone
But music, dry and curved as the leviathan flues
of wind so infinite and without hue–
the hush that crushes, writhing up through us
and flushes free with the roar of leaves, the rush–
our breath exchanged for yours, arranged from lip
to leaf, reused, we share a wreath of music
that breathes the furls, the pulse, the whorls, the beats,
the central cord of life and lord of senses.

we crack, snap! Our backs wrap in black
and red as the robes of heat lobe and spread
and the incense of our sap uncovers fins
of flame that flick and prick and stick our veins
and suck with lips of smoke the quick of us
and rise, as incense we ascend the skies--
like birds of feathery black, withered, wordless,
spent upon the firmament.
Slower burn our leaves to auburn
As bent as brittle snags, so riddled, rent
By rot they sag and fizzle as the lock
Uncoils and all the sunlight walled in soil
Alights to grace another face of life.

Ah, flight of angles, leaves entangled, bright!
The webs of leaves, the arcing heave of webs
Of green; the change of edge from flame to seam,
From dark to bright with windy flight we harken
To the melody of day to night, of swell
To trough, of bloom to fertile tomb and off
Anew to rouse the blood and dowse the root
Of space and time, a pulse alive, a baseless
Thriving consciousness that conjures lives
From bliss and binds each mind to miss
The truth of what it is. It cuts us loose
But never loses us. Our muse is ever
Spooling forth our clay; the source we tool
With powers like her own that cycle round:
Creation, sustenance, and thus decay,
Concealment: the root of mental fear
And gracious revelation, blessed aim!
You, the art, the act, the artist, you,
The instrument of will, to mess the whole
Into opposing themes. You pose as you
And play Macbeth, the man, and yet the daylight,
Rose and leafy green, the sea and coastal
Scrub tenacious, all the faces of
Existence well up from you or else desist.

Justice's Song of Tears

Look upon the fallen, broken, lost
And weep no more; be still.
Save your tears for joyful scenes and soft
Communions; and cry as you spill
onto your Beloved's body.

If tears do fall
over the broken remnants
Let them carry all
The weight of anguish;

Let tears dilute
The poison disconsolation
Until its clinging oils
Are a vivid, fresh perfume released
By the rocking of the waters.

Join your voice with the vine of grief
To writhe upon the opened ground
And plant the root of love
That was at a loss within the air.

Cry for love, O Love Divine!

Such tears bring peace.

Outrage, jealousy, and fear
Resist the alchemy of tears.
Indeed the more one weeps and blows,
The stronger the emotion grows
Until your tempest in the name of ease
Teaches hatred and like a thief
In daylight seizes all your hope.
Your line of thought becomes your killing rope.

Do not cry such thorny tears.
Weep no more, be still.
Justice is the blade inside
That turns injustice straight aside
Even as it seeks to nest a sorrow in the breast.