Dreams of You

Above the pool I grasp at shadows
like undergrowth

they steady me for the descent
resisting the pull of gravity

of the black water.

Do not assume indifference.

I wake to darkness but
the rising sun releases

an incandescent
explosion

the tears of ancient trees
locked in the earth for centuries

in beads of amber

warmed by your blood
melting
into your skin.

The High Mysteries

For Hazel whose pre-school painting has a green wave

There is a wave of green
that rolls off the loom of the earth.
There is a song thrush
to whom it is home.

There is a need to burrow down
below the surface of things –
rise with the sap
connect with the spring.

*

Twin boys live near
raised by a pretty mother
in their far-off land –
their childhood secrets

concealed
behind dark eyes
veiled
by the moon lids of Asia.

*

Sometimes the earth
yields up a treasure –
yesterday a flute
buried in the soil of Europe
for nine thousand years.

We know a little
that lies beneath the surfaces –

the dance of life
that weaves the scarves of silver
through the seas

the sounds and rhythms of an order
fashioned in the mind of some god,
older than creation,

solitary, terrifying,
whose voice is in the thunder
whose dance is in the storm.

Time Traveller

Lying in his cell a monk had a dream.
He could tell it was a dream
as his vision of the new Jerusalem
hung upside down in a mirror.

Escaping a hard life full of terrors
he caught the wind by its tail
swung himself up into the sky.

He flew over smoking sea caves
tidal pools studded with starfish
reefs and skerries
freshets and fountains.

Cadences of a fado rose with him –
an ancient lamentation
carried by wave and by blood
from a far continent.

The monk landed in a garden
watched a bouncing spider
cross a birdbath
on the water’s trampoline

listened to the dreams
of a stone-coloured cat
slumbering by the head
of a Buddha.

When a scholar closed the breviary
the page where the monk lived
returned to its own century
folded into the darkness.