Poetry

ATLAS

Atlas you should rest, 
you'll be hurting now with the weight of the sky,
your shoulders weary with rain and cloud and hope,
how many more days can we ask you to be there
when you have so many unfulfilled wishes?

It should be enough to give your name to 
all those books of papery pink empires;
do you wonder at the imaginary lines,
the unsettled borders drawn in the sand and on the page,
and in the heads of the scurrying and the worrying,
do you not hope with heart to see the end of all
the tinkerings and the meddling, the endless meddling,

and if they will not reconcile, be you much forgiven
for letting go your task, let the heavens crash
and all their meanderings would be for nothing
and that alone may yet save them, 
may yet let them come to know love.

ARCADIAN

Let us rise at six o clock, 

take the path up to the hill,

the one where if we are lucky 

we may just catch a far glimpse

of our own rare selves,

an unconsidered brushmark,

a shadow racing across the valley

to meet us here in this moment 

of our trembling blood.

Let us be this thing that trips and stumbles,

doesn't know so very much,

yet runs, stands still, swims and tumbles

its way through thin and thick, through tock and tick

through rivers and hedges, over stiles and fences.

Then let us pause, lose momentum, 

drink in the land, be not hell bent on,

say we are done with that and with this,

can return this day's sweet long kiss.

And now we may gather an acre of light,

a bushel of tender evening quiet

to store in jars for our wintered nights

a conserve for our weary granary.

So let us rest under the eaves of days,

and savour all the come what mays. 

ADRIFT AT NIGHT ON A LAKE

I am perhaps too in love with

this hooded half light,

embracing its indefinable contours,

dipping my toes in moonlight,

wearing shadows for clothes.

It feels right though to be here in this 

small vessel made of trust,

sculling criss cross, curious fish

whose concerns, as small and big as my own

are consumed by this kind black veil.

I am not heading anywhere,

there's no destination that would move me

and no past or future to surrender to,

pushing me one way or another,

there's just the dipping of wood on water,

the empty spaces between a bird's call,

and sweet scent from a late bonfire,

soon to be charcoal with which, 

should I return home

I may make a drawing of a

man adrift at night on a lake.

WAYFARER

I left the words I meant to recall on the path by the wood,

I was thinking to go back and get them,

but perhaps some other wayfarer will find them,

take them to their heart and bestow them in turn,

may rearrange them to sing a different song

and I shouldn't mind at all, but I do because

although they may be just as beautiful or more so,

I'd set such store in their meaning;

they were as lapis and as frankincense,

as a child's hand not held and 

as a glass of milk on lips,

the wind from the wings of a favoured

blackbird, felt soft and close,

an undiscovered song from a group long gone

a new way of looking at right and wrong,

a deeper understanding not taking too long.

So if I should find myself on a path by a wood 

and half recognise some words that have

fallen from trees, be familiar to me,

I may gather them in my arms,

embrace them, trace them back to the day

I dropped them, where there they took seed,

for they are as the beating hearts of bees in blossom,

a fall from a bicycle, a stinging of nettles,

a whale shaped cloud, a tremble of petals,

I'll write them on paper made from belief,

wrap them with string and bring them to thee. string and bring them

THE OFFERINGS

I can not find them now, the circle of trees

in the margins of this dark wood

that I've so loved and yearned for,

where the moon weaves a song

in the uppermost branches

and the dust on the wings of sleeping moths is

only unsettled by the rising of sap.

I looked long and hard for it was a sacred place,

wrote notes on leaves saying 

"lost, one failure of imagination, if found please return"

and waited for the night creatures to report any sightings.

An owl as white as myth and rich as myrrh flew close,

said the forest has grown but you have not changed

and engulfed with this philosophy

I sat quiet awhile to consider

only to find I was naked and cold.

Two deer drew near, one antlered one not;

he bowed his head as if divining an underground stream,

she carried a dress of golden light on her back.

Beautiful offerings, and I tried to call out 

but a monastery of silence fell from my lips,

I could not accept such extraordinary gifts.

You're a fool whispered festoons of ferns and 

so I ran and ran to catch up with kindness

but I stumbled and fell, cut my knee on the metal of others

and with a stick scratched the words ''come back, come back"

in the sky in my blindness, knowing they were long gone.

Walking home through trailing branches I was troubled,

how was I to undo this straitjacket I'd stitched to my skin,

to needle out the cruel splinter's pinch,

to unfold this too tightly blanketed night.

So from deep in my pockets I took out some shortcomings 

held them in my hands a while, then let them fall.

Turning at last I could just make out a halo of light up ahead

and caught the moon again, a scythe of silver etched deep into ink.