Croquis
In an absolute visual energy pool natural chaos we make these things: sage brushes soil drumlins first maps graves that rivered The crude kind of backwater animals traverse trawl and plashing in crumbling depth marks beside lake palms & fields some with their fishing rods hawsers streeling The denuded covert clearing loess scree charcoal a modello for canvas grafting wind sanguine flags tones from broken tors a gesture of the carry of clouds the skub-lided bestiary below the clints & places of shipwreck dashed by roseate stentors histories tinned the marram bowing shivered lea glyphic sediment hand-drawn topography lines the fin of roots canvas, wingspan, fell “Croquis” - Reliquiae: A Journal of Landscape, Nature and Mythology, Volume Four (Print) . Corbel Stone Press – The Scottish Borders, UK. November 2016 ...
Three Tracts in the Welkin
1. Shaw
a sun goddess who hid
from the sun
who chose her sword
wood away
& galloped with oars flycut to the wind
trailing her hawks
the swimming iris wold
combing airde & mountain heather
throne-floating divine waters
& daughters shifting
into wives
pictographs
apologues
she with her lion
finger in jaw
seat to the rising sun
vis divina vis humana vis naturalis
II. Cirque
Ra rides the solar baize
looms the trim-necked evening smarted
grayfelt
on a broken strain
muttering of the old kingdom
when swallowed Ra cords the sun
& returns in the kiln of morning
chooses his sword
energies brune
& daughters were borne unto them they’ll sing
plumped from the craven hours
mothers worth more than their wide berth
& the falcons
clearing shards from the ruined city
claque on mute
cottoning their talons
III. Varve
land unsifted
unlike her body travelled through by night
summer and winter
a sky goddess
sleighing the marges
rends into savage lioness
musking reams
tulle & flight
these open waivers
“Three Tracts in the Welkin” – Reliquiae: A Journal of Landscape, Nature and Mythology, Volume Four (Print). Corbel Stone Press – The Scottish Borders, UK. November 2016
…
Autumn
unfurls her
orange leaves
her gray morning
with the birds
threshing redding hulls
& that premonition
we call winter
revisits every tree
*
however brief
return
changed by the route took
“Autumn” – Shearsman Issue 111/112. April 2017