February And Beyond

In Ravenwood and Night

In Ravenwood

How the dark sky picks out evergreens today,
and ivy, lagging bare trees in a Jack of Plates.
Catkins in abundance, induviae of winged seeds,
and curled up crisps of mummied leaves
cannot mask a thickening of buds and swelling twigs,
slow growth with which trees sweep their air anew,
Gradualists -  and taking their time about it, too -
but visibly, spring’s slow match has been lit
bare gestures pregnant with hidden meaning:
a drama renewed, a yearning reconnected.

Across the plain that dark cloud-floor
runs in threatening parallel with inked hills.
Today a stream runs down the path to Ravenwood -
mud clogs, deep in hollows, flat impassibilities.

The air eagerly nips our hands that grasp on
stick and staff and cell-phone. In the Cave of
the Oath-breaker  it is warmer, much brighter
at deepest recess than our midwinter visit.
We stand in our own thoughts, I... I
remembering your empty declarations.

Disgorged again, the spindly, towering
birch wood is golden-boled, and fields
beyond, too, gilded all the way to blue horizon,
sun smiling slyly over my left shoulder
through ivied trunks high on the slope;
and holly tries to tell us something:
deep peace of synthesis beneath
its waxen leaves, sun finding leanings.

Jackdaws are uneasy, chuckling and rattling
as raven lunges over, out, across scored fields
and wind stirs birch tops  - circular mixers.

...........................

Night

A fattening moon,
within this cloud’s
chromatic halo,
yet aching far.

From maria
stamped
upon her lava
bandaged face,
a haunched wolf
now looks sidelong.

Something glitters
near bright stars
that will not be eclipsed,
extending a scaffold
for disquieting
illusions of contiguity.

Orion’s belt rides up,
canted, above a swathe
of moonlit cumulus.

......................