Libra

The heart that beats in leaf of oak,

Deciphered and danced to

By those who can do,

Offers echo of original relationship.

Communal choirs still sing of love

In every cell and sobbing heart.

Can you sit enough

In the seat of your own unknowing,

To savour the sound

Of every pain and piece of flapping fantasy,

That falls through ages untouched by wind

Or blood-wet bursts of

Sun-splattered rain?

How can this be?

That rivers run and write their script

In land and lives alike? 

I feel their flow in my fields of flesh

And beg to ask what earth is moved

In suspension of murky memory?

The channel is clean

And yes I lean towards clear reflection.

So speed on well, my swollen friend.

Your flood is mine,

For my banks are breached with your generous spill.

What else can I do, but see you; 

You and your silt-lipped beauty?

The stones you swallow

Have kissed my hand; my salt becomes seasoning

To your billowing broth, froth-flaked

And ripple-filled with desire to greet the sea.

Yes, great oceans await.

I hold my breath and gulp

The dream awake.

Somewhere your fresh meets brine,

Stories swirl on heaving tides

For intercourse of Sun and Moon

Does shake this Earth and its bulging veins

Alive.

Even over the wave-break surge of separation

Your wash does froth

In white-foamed spumes of union.

This is the touch of genius,

To blend the brackish bilge,

Light and dark with star-depth symmetry

And send it splashing soft upon

Shores of oft-washed awareness.

And when the ocean calls from a far,

Wind-whipped and wet with wonder,

Who hears that voice

So steeped in unfathomable glory?

Listen and listen again.

For no pain can still such shattering

Scream-bent silence.

And when the tongue of love,

Spiral traced through ash and

Blood-brushed flecks of dust,

Comes licking the mist from thought

And seed-full thinking,

I sigh and wait for time to die

A death from natural causes.

Below those minutes and seconds

And hours,

The wish driven days who crawl then fall

In a tattered haze of sleep-smoke,

A massed rank of marriages

Uphold the law of eternal exchange.

Man becomes wife, wife becomes man, 

A shadow is shared, sliced and served

With all-consuming relish.

And in the tasting of such fat-rich fare, 

Thick with lumps of neglected nourishment,

Commitment coats the eager tongue

In layers seldom savoured.

Yes commitment! Yes a contract!

For those who breathe unseen by eyes unopened,

Do so very love the drip-feed drops

Of  committed conscious action.

And this saline solution,

Sweet salted with crystal beads 

Of enduring concentration,

Slakes the thirst of such spirits

As come to drink of our own

Forgiveness.

Drunk they become at our own reception.

Dance they do to the sound

Of unceasing intention.

Rise we can to take our vows

Oh brides and grooms

Make haste without hurry.

This is holy matrimony.

The scales are set and 

Upon that heart of scared hearts

They sit in sexless balance.

The Father, the Mother, the Sister 

The Brother

The Loved and the Lover

In midpoint merge;

A pivotal moment for all concerned.

Divorce [to use its maiden name]

Or separation [see the modern game]

Is but a choice of awareness annulled. 

For ever are the two entwined, 

Their fabrics stitched by a third

Behind the seams.

And the hand that sews still knows

That one was once three,

Yes physically, full of footsteps and

Three-fold thinking.

Now, in this autumn dance of Earth years,

Leaf strewn and red with

Dead-blessed bursts of decay,

Those who reach the chasm and leap,

Feel the Fall in mind smashed marrow, 

The trunk of the Tree,

Roots and crown and all.

So it is in the heart of no-mind’s land.

No thinking to hinder the rising and sinking

Of Sun’s ablaze in the final

Fires of love.

A love so perfect in imperfection; 

Alive in the dead-deeps hot with

Death’s affection.

Dreaming the dream awake,

It slumbers not as I give

My eyes to god.

“Awaken all you I have 

Rough shook and shaken;

My announcement is this:

You are never forsaken.

When blinded you groped and 

Gut-grabbed your way through

Mire and mud covered ribbons 

Of roadway, I held you in my

Earth.

Mine was the hand that stroked your land,

Pressing it, pinching it, pulling 

 Skin-deep patches together. 

And all this, all this, simply

Because I love you. Yes it’s true

That through the ink-pool pupils,

You teach me of myself.

You reach me and into me.

Far inside I see through you,

Glimpsing unmentionable moments

Without end, tip-toeing and trampling

Into cell-soldered arc-lights 

Of welded bliss I know as my heart.

Yours are the tears I string as dew

On cobwebs brushed dripping

With starlight and shadows of Suns

To come.

Yours is the blood I squeeze from my heart,

Fat raindrops bleeding back to me.

For through you I strive to

Break the bounds of my heavenly

Hijacked creation.”