what even i wonder

is such a thing as this for?

what purposeless source does this reveal

like rune to mouth to estuary to god

for it is not even water rippling on the shore

smoke on the wind

or roots down deep in dark earth

instead being of shaped light and someone else’s dreams

and so we ask

just who is the Dreamer?

this cataleptic catafalque of boxed-in names

tens of millions of striated voices stridently proclaiming

– wherein lies the leaf-whispering susurrus

the emergent bark-voice floating across the mere

in joyful dirge; the barque bears immortal sovereign bones

scratched with a filigree of charm

blooded with the marrow of poets.

what even i wonder

beyond and between the lines and fibres

sits weaving; crabbed hand over crabbed hand

auguried entrails over and under; knotted destinies tied off and noose-made spaces blankly pregnant with apocalypses

just waiting to be engaged and encountered on their own terms alone

standing like isles of the dead gleaming with honeyed apples amidst

the ocean?

soul then, drinks us greedily back inside – salt and iron bending, turning

the ash now back upon ourselves

to set the stars we were, to flare anew

poetry is not prophecy and also contrariwise:

the stag runs and the white tower dons nacreous

rainbow blackness

the bones are unveiled and the head speaks with voice of ravens

– strong medicine, such a dream; bringing madness, rendering all insensate

only the heart may see

may bleed true and feed the root and branch

know that the king comes again

so says the wood

(0155 British Summer Time, 7th May 2015)