too quiet for footfall i stand in the garden and breathe the coming day, while long fingered light that knows of summers passed pries open the buds unfurls new leaves and the jasmine croons her scent to the fading stars.
we wake before the day now, switch on lights to rouse the sleepers drink tea while the sky forms above the hill and darkness becomes forest and home. outside the air, damp-cool as frogskin, is shaking with song, in trees and hedges small birds grow fat on autumn”s bounty. the goats, pungent for rutting season,…
it is clear light this morning that paints deep shade, earth barred and lined with the shadows of trees. hills and fields patterned like the hide of a beast sleeping soft and steady spilled with sun.
beneath the thinning of the sky,beneath the stars thathave receded one by oneyielding their light to day,beneath the swim linesof swallow and ibis and goose,the mist has come –drifting across the field,hovering light over the damwhere heron stirs the seasonsone careful footfallat a time.
when i was in the shop the egrets were flying over. when i was getting milk, scanning the day’s bread delivery, greeting the cashier, the egrets were flying over – hundreds of wings whispering the grey sky i could not see. when i was unfolding my bag, packing my groceries, entering my pin, the egrets…
i wait for it the light over purple mountains that will come like the wings of the egrets shushing the morning carrying my breath to the sky it will come spilling across farmland and forest along the plateau dipping valley after valley until it finds me waiting last hill before the sea paints my shirt…
don’t speak to me of inevitability, don’t plant seeds that grow unchecked in my mind, grow rank and wild where no thing grew before. inevitably your words will find me here walking morning dewed, barefoot and thigh deep amongst this growing, running waking fingers through this light breathing sweetness of blossom and tang of earth…
and though it be this morning rises salt and cool like ocean breath and lays low across hills, calling mountain and deep forest valley to its mystery. claiming both sunlight and shadow as its own. still i am here, claimed and unclaimable, while geese wade steady on fog wings their beauty ripping the sky.
words don’t come to speak you though i sit here drinking this jubilation watching leaf shadows turn to jewel birds as morning takes the hill takes me, washes the gushing of the season in light only flowers can speak, light only birds can sing. would i choose the way of the flower, way of the…
i light the morning fire though today sun will come warming the floors drying the wool hung in skeins after dyeing. there is time still for love to breathe me before light has turned to day and the world begins its waking. these are my gods this morning warmth of flame burning dead-fall wood. chorister…