I.
Following a pathway of foot-jewels to the capsized summit
II.
Leaving low lying lands whose gyres and waterfalls climb
III.
Entering the site of undecided cloud wars
IV.
My shadow touches the trig-point leaving my body’s mechanics behind
V.
Clouds volley my shadow into the valley
VI.
Ash trees shake snowfall down limestone’s spine
VII.
Crescent moon blinks a snow-smile and winks out until next time
Hey ivy,
Hey-ey-ey-ey ivy
Life force of this valley
Immortal green
Hey ivy,
Hey-ey-ey-ey ivy
Arriving from mystery
In a chorus of leaves
Hey ivy,
Hey-ey-ey-ey ivy
She gives us shelter
Beneath her palisades
Hey ivy,
Hey-ey-ey-ey ivy
She feeds us berries
When trees are bleak
Hey ivy,
Hey-ey-ey-ey ivy
We sing her praise songs
With ardent beaks
I.
As the longest night looses
darkest claws I walk amongst shadows
at dawn where moonlight floods
through the arms of trees
and a solitary lamppost lights the vale.
II.
River-trees stand stark and tall,
consistent in her mind’s
unravelling of currents and tides,
cormorants and gulls,
a ragged heron.
III.
The host’s roar to a lullaby
quells as moon leads dawn
over chiming hills to be swallowed
by cloud as the hunt returns
to graveyard and mound.
IV.
My lord of the fay
makes his presence known.
He speaks to the mist within my bones
like the lych gate unfastening,
awenydd– my magic word.
V.
The spirit paths are mine
to walk for an evanescent pulse
of dawn. Time stands still
from vale to hill and the stream
sings: awenydd, awenydd.
Leaves are falling with the rain.
Darkness is upon us once again.
Hooves splashing through the mud
Dance with sycamore colours,
They are no longer flesh or blood
But the shape of time’s procession
Riding shadowed through the rain.
Darkness is upon us once again.
Fairy:
Trip, splash
The celandine
A radiant flash
A widening sequin.
Skip, pour
A dazzling shower
Bottled sunshine
Painting with flowers.
Flick, hold
The centre of gold
Globe in beauty
Shine like sunlight.
Flip, pelt,
Explode to my spell
Spreading the valley
With bountiful yellow.
The ground is parched, flowers sparse,
celandine’s only growing
near the stream. There is no grass
on the green but still they’re mowing
the same old tortured track ways.
Someone killed a daffodil
and spread it’s butchered limbs across
the valley. The trees might not fight
back but the winds will undo
our Baconian mechanics.
I was told by an ancient god
this world met it’s end in 2012.
When no-one noticed he only
laughed a little bit- whilst worlds
are always changing people don’t.
* This poem was inspired by a line shared by Coll on the Druid Network Members’ site: ‘Genius is but a robin’s song at the beginning of a slow spring.’ – Kahlil Gibran
Rainwater sharp drums the earth’s dark soil,
With a tantalizing splash sinks into her pores.
Through a tumult of tunnels, tumbling forth
From a pipeline vessel comes my concrete source.
Sieving through stones I wind my way around,
Slipping by silt, diving sleek from platforms,
Foaming effervescent, wooden rails hold my course.
I’m driven through the gauntlet like a wilful water horse.
My tributaries tremble through constricting veins
Their water has been stolen by the sewers and the drains.
The contusion of pipes plugging earth’s damp flesh
Dumps on my banks, spitting domestic waste.
My hydrophonic pulse with the force to drive a mill
Springs from showers and spins in washing machines.
Weeping by wounds of flesh pink clay,
I seep through grooves as the land is washed away.
When the earth’s dark skin is sealed under concrete,
The last dash of water in the New Town monster
And my channel dies tight by their eyeless folly
My streaming ghost will scream through the valley.
Full moon breaks the rushes,
quivering lips soft whiskered brush the water,
hair line trail traces black velvet muzzle
which moistens, smacks and laps,
heavy glug of oesophagus
tugs water to the bowels of a dread black creature.
The beast drinks deep, shaggy hide
long and twitching skirts agile cloven feet.
His saucer red eyes hold star glow infernal.
Head raised dripping, he speaks a gargling tale
of strangled marshes, dried out mosslands,
shrunken brooks and pools abandoned,
eternal thirst his cruel domain and an endless lust for riders
to sink beneath the skin of a world unintelligible
to one deep as peat and old as the glaciers.
His lips close slapping. His burning eyes blink.
With a fish-like leap he slips below the water.
From Peneverdant 