An Bealach t� Solas

I used to know a lot about light. I could
keep count the circles it would run about
tugging on shadows to draw them long
across the hillsides. Sleeping stones
standing sentinel upright.

 

in the west country

there are stories of the smaller gaulish sidhe,
who make you drop your toast,
with the butter side to the stone.
In other communes, you would be wise to
learn to tithe more appropriately, meaning:
give gratitude that you have even bread crumbs
to wind your way home at all.

- Oh! Ursa major, my cup runneth over;
I dare you: chase me into cosmic, or rather,
stellar supernova transmutation evolutions!
Even if a clumsy and clueless route proves
to the sole-wide travels of souls, traipsing
into every other fruit-bearing green pasture,
strewn with early snow, overhead.

The felted air-fields and solutions sewn from
all possibilities, the quark and the broom --
where, oh were are we to go looking for (perhaps even
find) heroes now? Saints seem as familiar to me
as faërie tales, but I refuse to resort to ill-printed
classifieds, windows filled with pulp-wood roses, bleeding
ink in triplicate - What of St. Denis, Abbot?

My brown paper bags holding soaking russet crowns,
lined with the soggy newsprint underfoot, rotting
out the potential suitors to one forlorn human panic,
let me love so exquisitely and silently tufted, like
a doll sewn to her limbs, filled with clove and cinnamon
a good brisk friction to mask old journeys;
a whispering talisman to keep in your pocket.

In order to understand why
certain trees will burn and others will not,

upon being flint kissed by lightning,

I recommend speaking
to oaken gods. Apple men kingdoms
but best not be caught with those who sew the
earth with their green needles, they don't even
know how to die, until it is too late.

 

A whole mountain-side a-flame or
cut deep to the quick by a summering beetle,
only look for them, whose leaves that fall in trials
like Frost's ingenious image, my own lost
sheep-skin lined and fitted upon the ground,
leather gloves. Most days I look up. just up
into branches grafted into natural Gothic arches,
woven by defter hands than I can follow.
you were right: Stillness is all that comes out
when light moves inward.

Reviews

[Doctor JKC]

Up, butter side-down.

So pagan with understanding.
And it's all the same except
for it's shape.
You are an oak!
Jack

[W.k.kortas]

Ursa Major and pocket talismen. The great and the small. The personal and the universal. It is all here, and given to us with wonderful wordplay and the utmost care. Pretty damn wonderful.

[Ed Hart]

I use to do that on LSD'...now I can only do it with cats and crazy people...