*

PLUMS & VINE

Plums and vine (as the Atlantic is green)
intone the heavy church wall
with errant sprigs, so Heaven sent
they are big with earthly passion
racing for the sky.

Madonna Poverta in her midst
with the pulpit clutching Light -
so gnarled, like bush, that each crevice
reeks with stone
all stooped under such worldly avarice.
36

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PERHAPS
Perhaps the sky once was shadows,
the moon lisped 'mongst April's song.
Now, those warm lips ease
departing sorrow
like pressed flowers
emptied from hallowed ground.
37

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APPROACHING THIRTY (Lauds and Matins)

Laconic tears or Botticelli's Venus
holding the years
like tresses
in a wistful pose.

Tenebrous youth accosted
by callow Time
bleeds the heart
with spring aloes.
No comfortable shibboleths
to restrain the wriggling polyps
in the skin or nestling hair.

Gerundive in movement,
each particled whimper
of the clock surrounds
a cloistered second
poised about the bearded target.
As far as you know, nothing unusual.

A total of eight hundred months
but grammar school sums,
spiel & mileage
to drift across a lifetime.
At thirty, the best half of the potage
is gruel hand drawn from
the sabulous pot.
38

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PASSAGEWAYS

Greet the days -
greet the moon,
gather the stars.. .
Man is not at one with himself -
collars the infidel ways of his
race under pressure domes of widening silence.

I scan the horizon barely cognizant
of the metallic bits that pierce
the night's crown - no
jewelled orb stabs this queen's spectre.
I am running and lost. . . ever slow
to breech this reasoning.

Honeysuckle mist with armfuls
of orange lilies with scent stronger
than the carriage needed in their gathering.

Place the constellations upon their heads,
the colour so transcends.
And then there are the bludgeoned
stars fallen into the eyes of
my farmhouse scene.
The sphinx moth that darns the night
with her acrobatics escapes the wreath
of troubled moon that places about
her proboscised head.
Let her stone the night in peace,
feel palpitations on her ocean breast.

The darting of stone cracks in fissures