They make me think of creatures from another star

stalking bipeds, wrongly incarnate

aliens in a consumer world.

 

Though they teeter on the fringes

stuck in skins and minds

I can tell that they are harbingers of the new

nerve-raw shoots of metamorphosis

maggots of return, screams of rebirth.

They dance on the hilltops, wind-sozzled and honed

like witches in the honey-dew.

 

I know the lanes they tread

booted, sloshing in the mud and moss

beneath the hazel boughs

painted with melted light

where the first folk still ride

cascading with bells and laughter

down the moon-blue shadows

in ancient, aspen grace.

 

The bracken and cow parsley dabble in the stream

and the water, silken, chants around my bones

tangling in my head like rainbow weeds.

 

As far as the natives know

as they lie in their pillows and  Saturday  lust

the sheep just bleat there and the cold kale drips.

The owl in the oak bole is only an owl

for who would think of tramping up a hill at 3 am

for no reason at all?

 

But mine are the creatures of a distant age

embodied there on the brink of destruction

with angry hair and words

that their eyes and hands belie.

Implanted there by an inscrutable divinity

in the shrivelled belly of days

lotus-eating savants and simpletons

- iconoclastic, random, rascally -

fey, in strong silence

prancing their feet and veins

in the tumult, the sour-sweet ecstasy

of Becoming.

 

 

1983