there you lay
in your cradled bed
unable to move
hair thin,
skin frail,
bones sagging,
your eyes open
but, so far away
perhaps you are where i
remember you best,
smiling,
on your knees on the carpeted floor,
round, radiant summer skirt,
spread about like a pool
Venus wears a diadem
tangled in her outspread hair.
I saw her rise above the hill
and life was not the same again.
Her hair, the night,
deep and black,
yours the dawn.
the sun on fire.
Venus rules the lovers knot.
We lay entwined beneath her spell
and lingered by her flaming fires
where passion is a sacrament.
Now Pan is here.
He came at dawn.
I scent him on the morning air
as I lay sweating in your arms.
Diamonds are dust compressed,
lust and love are all the same.
What I say I say with touch,
words of love without a sound.
Pan is dancing through our sheets
and Venus shines and smiles above.
this daily journey, marked by constant icy rain,
filling streams and hiding tears,
brings me to this silent bed again
outside the windows, blossoms slowly fall in gentle wind
but these are not the flowers she see
as she leaves here, by degrees
While plague after plague swept through the city
Winnowing lives, like corn, without pity,
The gallows stood close, the axe was not dulled,
While I, by the peace of Avon was lulled.
The play is the thing, all life is a play,
Three days and nights on horse-back away.
All journeys end in true lovers greeting.
Where the bee sucks our pleasures were fleeting,
Violets, eglantine, sweet summer wine,
Came with their season and then he was mine.
Spring time is gone, winter’s cold, he is dead.
I dream in the depths of our second best bed.
Seasons keep turning, and little remains
but wise words from sweet Will, who won’t come again.
the visions nightly gather
around my mother’s bed
she fears to lose the light
she huddles like a child
who needs a low lit lamp
and dreads the lullaby
she hides inside the story books
and keeps the bell at hand
her bedside charms are bastions
against that other land
the visions nightly gather
around my mother’s bed
she knows that all her visitors
are shadows of the dead
Four cottages stood in a silent row
out on the windswept lonely moor.
People came and people went
but no one came to the old mans door.
The old mans home stood empty now
autumn leaves littered the floor
a smell of must hung in the air,
winters damp and lack of care.
Seeking a home I entered in
Knowing nothing at all of him.
Like an intruder i climbed the stair
to a room, quiet, stark and bare.
An empty bed, the covers pulled back
an empty chair, a water glass
half full, a film of tired dust.
A hollow, a dip at the pillows heart,
round imprint of a sleeping head,
all that is left of the old man, dead.
He lay alone for two long weeks
abandoned in his silent bed
The Dreaming Path 