AEAEA
Recurring Dream Island

November 2004
 
 

11 November 2004
 

The Cage Set Free
 

By soft-fingered stroke—deepest-under-down-feather
escape from confinement, bird-shudder-taught flown
sudden-spoken yet lingering words—let us ever
so finally lie down alongside the lone
lasting measure I gave you when you were a maiden
whose eyes had sought mine a mad-miracled age.
In sooth be the sigh of love-weather whose bated
astonishment-then pours its flight a wild cage
that shall never be nothing but letters set lifting
the down all the length of the beast-angel spine
we yet strengthen by sheer force of dancing—when swift as
smile-spirits our flights intermingle and twine
out a bright silver thread of mercurial moonlight
the morn moving over us never need break
but in tune with the measure so mindful of dew my
eyes open-wide yours—We make music awake.
 

***
 

12 November 2004
 

The Spring-Melt Midwife
 

So-more-silver cherished one, bearer of music
awake to the pale tarnished angular throne
I am leaning to make of my body, your using
deep liquid ideas to tender the lone
love of half-anguished incense drawn in by a breathing-
in-pain mortal weakness means listened-wet I
must be trembled.  Whose cry sets me rapidly keening
 unfreezes the ice-crystal time has made lie
in the soft lunar hollow where snowfall in drifted
abundance has sung often-luminous plains.
I wanted—I have—and I long still for shifted
white sadness to gather its ruins and rains
of imagined melt-oceans and drown in them, wholly
true love singing over and over your life.
Being dreams deep and sound now—though still leaking slowly—
our dawn is announced:  Song has found its midwife.
 

***
 

13 November 2004
 

Moan After Lightning
 

Past rapture as mad as—fast smoke through a window
a wild glance has smashed—where a feather, a seed
at its wet living tip, glows a-dance amid splinters
of erstwhile unclarity—happenstance me’d
by strange magic toward the high voice of its caller,
we made of speed cloud-wings.  Now all they are flown.
I am gasping yet, straining.  Love-words that stayed small on
the long wind’s night rain are now massively grown
and so heavy—to hold them alive, deeply beating,
brings eerie unweariness.  Such force upraised
their impossibly audible stretching to meet me,
its smiling inside is struck dawningly blazed
as the clear ocean-sky I am breathing.  One rush of
wing-heartbeats the more—You shall spirit alone
while I lust this bolt free, but re-shoulder the crush of
your own helpless want as much stranger winds moan.
 

***
 

14 November 2004
 

The Dam and the Curse
 

I lay where the woods flung sudden shutters
wide on a leafless winter glade
and wanted the lust-struck hooves a rutted
pathway between high trees betrayed—
but only the tap of branch-wet fingers
under an arch of yet-more rain
regaled me with nigh-fantasmal singing
out of a sky of eyes made plain
though veiled with a swathe of cloud-black netting.
Ancient, the stare through that drenched mesh,
though drowned in a wailing wash that set me
steeling a level breath tense flesh
could draw of itself because the vanished
woman I must not cease to be
had lapsed into melting-waters danced of
hooves:  Aye, we’ve struck this stream-course free.
 

***
 

16 November 2004
 

The Moonstone Flag
 

Your hand round the back of my neck is so wholly
electric, the shudder and fall of the faint
flying pulse I shall warm to while breathing so slowly—
nigh not at all—woe was the severing taint
on the breath of my ghost-corpse, but now that failed body
waits silently.  Let us arise, mingled air
and the matter of sparks flying wildly from thoughtless
desire into reaches so dismally fair
a scant heartbeat ago, I made words to mean Never.
You listened them under and over the flag
that hangs heavily, closed doorstep-stone to sad weather
inside the missed measures where cadences lag,
being my being only.  Your hand, and the trickle
of rain which is warmly condensed fog of far
longing home—Take this faint to your gathering sickle
and I shall go forward wherever you are.
 

***
 

19 November 2004
 

Your Branch of Song-Craft
 

A mast-littered branch—fallen seaman-obsession,
cold rope-bewreathed sail-bearing tree-arm and hand
slow dark waves had bade dance—gestured me to a fresh and
old spring-watered field within view of the strand
where its length first made land, salt-carved letters of welcome
already then telling new tales in live song
through the fingers I stretched for and touched.  The grave smell of
their wetness—Will I have gone utterly wrong
if in time, having breathed to re-root their pale magic
down into a zone of transfused fire despite
ancient warnings, I feel that fine seasickness catching
its like as strange towering waves reach a height
the old sea their monstrosity raised up could never
design nor desire?  Plunge that much-branching mast,
dripping deeply asail, into green-dawning weather.
Here time is a fugue tidal musics move past.
 

***
 

27 November 2004
 

The White Sky of Winter
 

quickening graveyard angel vows
 

Words interlaid among braid-like furrows
cold water rains are still carving now
complain of dry days as their holy murmurs
slide down a bone-white marble brow
from which only low light shines, though someone
waiting within that temple-dome
uneasily sighs and shifts:  Becoming-
stranger-one, let you make your home
of liquefied hearthlight here with splendid
song-fluid ghosts, live-shadowed forms
flung open, all inverse darkness blended
hugely with snow that falling warms
in lust of much further thought.  Wild gleaming
caught through a quick-unshuttered eye,
sly being new-murmured, milky stream of
magic—you’ve filled this bone-white sky.