The Third Coming

You miss someone
in lands where once
spontaneity had a memory,
an echo of sameness,
a dark, delicious giving in .
It's an odd missing...for,
beyond all eternities,
you finally know
the meaning of forever .
And you miss someone,
 feel the welling, the stab,
in ocean eyes of loss,
your bit of grit, the only
pearl in your oyster.
It's an odd missing ,coz'
beyond all tears ,
smiling thru' mists ,you know
the meaning of now.
Between now and forever
pants the nomad ,
my wandering Oisin,
the climactic moment......

Razor's Edge

What you did
was not love
but a gesture
towards a dream,
a cautious stir
in the cauldron
of your rejections.
`Twas but a moan
from that funny ol' bone
of desire....rare gooseflesh
on the arms of routine.
Was nary a soft,
a soft reminder
of flattened grass,
of blushing fingertips
tracing tender paths.
Instead ,it was heard
as a stealthy slide,
a sibilant whisper
in soft conched ears
of sleeping innocence.
And I ,precarious ,
on the edge of choice,
pondered but a moment,
let go, and fell,
like gravity's apple,
on the head of need.....

The Taken Roads

Some walks you have to take alone:

The one where you,
in a devil's pact,
walked decades
towards undulations
of passionate forms,
each rise and fall
a promised reaching.

That ,which steep,
draws, hesitant , back
the hinder foot still firmer;
where cornered innocence
stares, transfixed,
in cross-hairs of
an unforgiving moment.

And on paths where you,
oftimes ,would hear,
the crackle of melting snows,
and, in the yonder,
a rhythmic cadence
of surrendering anklets
homing in........

Some walks you have to take alone.

The Falconer !

And I have let them go,
one by loved one,
unlatching protecting cages
within,locking doors
against their return.
Between being and becoming,
face fresh with sorrow, I,
oyster of a single tear,
float with the Angler,
dangle with the bait,
smell mortality on my hand,
and choking.......say ,
"it is better this way "

Grecian Dreams

The Oread of the rainbow glen
fixes me in charcoal stares,
those emberous whirligigs of fires
twin pixies of warm desires;
limpid, ask the Actaeon hounds,
"why his scars precede his wounds ?"
Her lips with Restoration blest,
then soft,trace the fevered brow,
.wetly, wake me with a start,
tender, tug the strings of heart,
pull me 'neath a hyacinth tree
and bring the Narcissus out in me.........

The Lost Horizon

Where fireflies light the darkling gloam
and ever the brambled magpies cower,
there once did dwell my childhood dream
that ruined prince of a lonely tower.

Dream it was that did wake first
then the Horn and then the Drummer,
cupped its ears ,ironic, whispered
"did that swallow make your summer "?

And I the beadle, eagle-eyed
sentinel of a playful dove,
wistful, wasted , weary ,murmur
"ah ! I could not hold that love.

It wrenched and teary ,skyward flew
and pausing, perched a-top a steeple,
said "goodbye ! lords of sleeping truths ,
I ain't so good at losing people ".

Time and Tide

With gratitude to Taseer who ,I know not how ,knew that it is a rainy sunday in my neck of woods.Thinking then ,of flowing waters , choppy seas and life's parade passing me by .......

Is it a longing seaward stare
or just a droopy quay-side look
do I take the tide on flood
or let the shallows be my brook ?

The glimmering beach-head beckons still
with splintered hour-glasses strewn,
did the sands just vacuous sift
or time on view-less wings has flown ?

But hark ! anon, when rainbow flumes
whisper to the clouds that fly
I tautly tensile raise my fist
and salute before the ship goes by.