Branded

Poems of Divinity and Despair

Having spent over half a century in love with the natural world, I am finding despair a more constant companion when I see the effect humanity is having on our other than human neighbours. This is a collection of sadness and an offering to vanishing times that overflow with joy and autopoiesis. Can poetry change things? I don’t know – but for me its like looking at clouds – it blurs the boundary between self and other. A modest kick at the Divine can – in both senses of the word.

Wordsworth is the one I go to in despair and he gives me hope of not being alone in that dark place – Its dark here – but there is a friend all be he dead and gone.

Walking Under Clouds with Astra

Gray pinnacles of sky

Converge on breast

And belly

Cheek and haunch

She walks a slow wind rhythm

Smooth smoke

Alert rain

Astra

Some secrets

Only the body knows

Moon madness makes

Starlight sane

In her eyes

Sun and lightning

Slumber in dapples

Of night lakes

Gentle whispers

of the bright wild

Astra

The Dead

I see them fluttering

Magnificent

I see them

And under the skin of being human

I know that we have killed another of our gods

Or perhaps

Only the messenger angels who told us of fragility and tender winds

For now the winds are changing

They will blow off our wings

And stave in our souls

And the whispers of the Monarch

Will lay like dust

Over our Genetically Modified Corpses

For we are no longer human

I saw them before I was born

Into this world of

pitiful passions and

plundered plenty

Their immense journey plucking

Strings of awe

With a spider’s grace

Slanting the sun

Orange and Black.

Dinosaurs without fossils

The soul of humankind

As ephemeral as

Time

Snuffed

Dead

With a

feeble requiem of

“Whoops”

III

And still we blunder on

Convinced of our immortality

Our divine importance

Our sexy strivings

To see into the womb

Of the Golden Goose of Life

Still we persevere

With bandages and glue

To fasten wings to dreams

The bodies of which

Mock us

With

extinctions

For in trying to cheat inevitability

In trying to sample

The secret of the eternal spring

We have covered the sweetly

changing cycles

With cynical abandon

We have

Become the

Devil

And welcomed hell

Taugh

Oh! Bright Bay Lad

From the pasture you

Captured me

Bobolink and swallows

Wove nests of

Horse-hair and infinity

In my heart

We moved time

And space

Mobiüs Leathers nudge

Souls

Out to In

Beyond magic

Your back

A drum

Your hooves

Braille for angels

Your sweet wide mouth

Takes refuge in meadowlarks’ throats

What a suspension

Held between earth

And sky

With your

Brave self

In my middle

It's

It’s

It’s a COVID Time

A Storm the Capitol Time

Impeach a President Time

A Zoom Time

A Stay in Room Time

a time that oozes through the cracks of bigger

time dripping acid into acri

mony and then washing it aw

ay with the baseness of ne

ed.

I need yo

u human

ity … I thought I didn’t but

when I stop on the road

waiving at every car

yearning for every car to waive back

clutch dads walking stick with the carved horse handle

feel my broke rib clutch at bruised muscle

well then

the cage becomes the nest

life becomes the clutch of eggs

the heart becomes the refuge

Clutch

November

One thousand Grey Eyed Geese

Gabble in the liquid dusk of

Shining lake

Bottoms up

Wiley in the weeds

as Owls shift

How do you swoop and stall?

The chortling geese

Slash the fading pink of sunset

with the soft jag of stretched silhouettes

Lilting starlings tickle the sharp air

With choices … with left and right … and up

And down … and fall and lift … sprinkle the

Sweet blue harlequin evening with

Flowing intentions and genius grace

Oh! I stand amazed

And wade in worlds

More wonderful

than I can imagine!

SALE

Butterfly pelts

Orange and Black

Legs the width of thought

the length of stems

Fur the soft of tingle

The lift of

Chemical Companies

Putting a bounty on Hope

Taugh 2

Teddy Ruskin

Like licorice in a snow storm

Sweet you

Not too sure if

You should give your

Permission

To bend

There is a scar

A pucker of memory

On your shoulder

That feels like Bill …

That feels like young

We have a history

As frail as a butterflies wing

And then you nudge me

With your sassy lips

And the frail becomes

A trail

Easing

For

future

Trails

Brushing Leaves

From

Eye of

Teddy Ruskin

Snap Crack

We tear the dead branches

From the mind of frolic-weary giants

They bend, they break, they snap at us

And then they lay their bones

Upon the upturned ground and we

Of flesh and blood, imitate

The gods and prance and flounce

In blink, and eyelash, a tremble of

BIG TIME in the small salty cavern of a tear

The giants sigh

Even dead, they shift under us

And wryly mutter as we clear their

thoughts with tumbles of our own

They hammer us with tomorrow – and – infinity

And we flatten slightly against the

Slippery-Seamed The-ness of eternal midnights

The clasp of forever making our presence

Imaginary – or – real

Or …

Eudaimoniac

Bri’s word

Night Magic

There you are

Or are you

Dim shape in

Dark pasture

I teeter on the

brink of your night vision

And there I see

Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel

darkness finds rhythm

Your hooves on snow

Space comes with

you as you

move towards us

Our

pupils portals

to a universe of

souls

Because - when I Seeeee

yooooou Feeeeeeeeeeeeel

yooooooouu Seeeeeeeeeeee

eeeeeeee Youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel

Yooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Sigh !

You sthick out your thounge tho thaste the world with

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