Buzzard's Roost

Castellated cliff-face,
limestone battlement
The rocks climb up to the ramparts,
piling on top of one another
as if to dare the next in line:
Jump! Jump!
Then finally they plunge away,
five hundred feet at a leap

From here everything
falls away in green gulches
and pine-tree precipices
and spires of stone
I wave to the nearest tower,
greetings to the eagle! He keeps watch there
His amber eye misses nothing—
quintessential watchman,
suited by nature to his sentinel-station

Smoke tendrils like lazy grey ribbons
from the lodge in the valley below
At this height the vapors dissipate,
cartwheeling on a thousand zephyrs
Zeus and Aeolus
keep company in this place

Where two kingdoms meet
I look down from the top of the world,
Or what seems like it at least—
for I can see in the distance
heights even higher than these.

August 2010

Pas de deux

A plains thunderstorm breaks over the hills.
Rainwater quenches bones of stone
Spattering at first
Then trickling
Then tumbling in torrents.
As David lay hidden in the marble
So this streambed lay hidden in the earth,
Awaiting rain’s purifying rush
To hew it from the living rock.
First the water rushes frantically over the ground
Splashing in puddles and seeping into pore space.
But with time the elements themselves will learn the lovers’ dance.

* * *

In the valley,
Redolent of pine-resin and birch-bark,
Swift stream caresses smooth stone.
Nature’s alliteration bubbling in rivulets,
Wild cascade somersaults
Pry loose a pebble here,
Shear away a shallow bank there—
But it’s all in the dance.

But as the water works loose the stone
So also the streambed breaks the flow.
Catapulting over rapids,
Eddies like Persian dervishes,
Leaping on wings of foam.
Spray exploding in air—
But it’s all in the dance.

The stream is pressed close now.
Feel the heartbeat of the water,
The gentle breathing of the earth.

With ore-riven organs and draconian drums,
Eight Skilled Gentlemen could make no finer water-music—
Monotonous at first
But on further inspection a symphony of light and shade.

Sunlight’s bold unison reaches its crescendo
And bursts in a thousand glittering trills,
Laughing over rapids and rills,
Coursing down the hills it goes,
Tripping head over heels for joy,
And pebbles follow after—

Chaotic? Perhaps.
But they are in step,
The water and the earth,
Acting out the figures they have learned through long acquaintance
In a lovers’ dance delirious.

July 2010