Lark & Merlin

                         1

a wren,

perched on a hawthorn

low enough to skip

the scalping winds,

sang a scalpel song

seafrets drift

sheer along shorelines

listening to hail spray glass

and wind

and a waitress laugh

in a cafe without customers

I fell to fell thinking

                         * * *

a sullen light through vapor

thins a line of hills

the edge of everything is nothing

whipped by wind

watched on a webcam

bound to a bedpost

gag on my shaft

rose blush of road-kill rabbit

insides out on tarmacadam

                         * * *

cumulus in a tarn

its fast shadow

flees far hills

a wave of sleek grass

skiffs mist

my hand thought of her

a photograph

waiting to happen

                         * * *

this come-to-kill wind

rips at the root

here she comes

and there she goes

rushes bow to rime

I should shut down

close off

stop

if I could

how quick the mist

how quick

                         2

my lover, the assassin,

is beautiful

she has come to kill me

and I concur

just now she sleeps

but when she wakes I’m dead

her eyelids flitter

as I prepare her potions,

her delicious poisons

                         * * *

as she flew past a lick

of her melodic nectar

stuck to my wing,

making flight, for an instant,

sticky

but nothing preening couldn’t fix

                         * * *

she asked about my heart,

its evasive flight;

but can I trust her with its secrets?

and does the merlin, in fast pursuit of its prey,

tell the fleeing lark

it is enamored of its song?

or the singing lark turn tail

and fly into the falcon’s talons?

                         * * *

my heart, the cartographer, charts

to the waterline,

is swept back as the tide turns

wiping the map blank, wave

after moon-drawn wave

but it beats, my heart,

of its own volition

a lark sings winds rush reeds

walking home I stride these tracks

with her tread

the blurred thumbprint

of a smudged moon

                         3

it has gone on for days

strumming rushes

taking up tales,

taking them on

the fall of my foot,

on tufts

a stroke of light along a law lain in under a long cloud

I accrete—lichen to limestone

sphagnum to peat

                         * * *

late shadows gather in the dark

words unwrite

as they are written

unspeak

as they are spoken

songs sprung

from heart and lung

to tongue

unsung

                         * * *

drunk winds stumble over shuffling roofs

shake his sleep who dreams

a lost love

will not

let

go

recurring swirls

of old gold

blown light

you can’t help

but be in it

as it opens

and falls back on itself

unfolds and unsays

I do not want to die

without writing the unwritten

pleasure of water