Yes, through dry and ever hollied
dunes, pale granite sands, I have known
the salt crests come with amber. Nights
I never slept, naked, stretching
at birdlight. I spent my days
striding up and down your garden
up the peaks and down dark
folleyed glens; cascading frenzy
poured out of me in happy gulps.

All I could do was grope for pages, my orchard
spirit shaking words.

I still laugh. I sigh, heave
of living.  I wander fiery
now that I possess platform to speak,
stumble with incoherence,
can’t form words. Dumbest of priests
laugh at my plight.

My lines add no nectar to combs.
With you, I could put the run on malady,
undress my cloudy brow, focus
on something practical.
I pray I will love
with the feint touch
of the butterfly

my heart still beats for, stands
apart.  I stall in the season of confessed
and fallow earth. I’ll fold my decline away
before the night arrives so that the stars
may the brighter candle my blank pages
after twilight. I sense I’ll be made luminous
in my weakness where the ground’s slippery
as a childhood rockpool.

I hope to die as I lived out my best work
loved, and giving love, and, at the extreme,
railing that love was not celebrated.
To each his scaffold. Losing the head,
what of it?

Thomas?
Do not
addle me with unctions.

Love that sees us come
hassles the very brambles
in our fiery paths
as friends.