Garin Hay

    who beckons from your god-pathed sky?   whose oak's slow splay of black lightning sky-whirled branches holding up a world?   who will be warmed by this fire you tend            hidden bare flame that is naked gods?   who saturates your sunset?   this earth must be loved for it to ripen us our skin taught with the outwardness of our wishes   whose fingers through your pale fields and living streams lips to every wet petal of your red poppies every rush and wind’s caress of your voice every gasp taken in sun’s light made soft touch?   who shall tread with you in sun’s steps?    

        sought cradle of mist   longing of low wet cloud brought sea yield       ghostgreen cobweb        covers bare crystal branches in fog   black torn-out trunk holds grey flow       salmon ringed in trees’ lock   in wet violet         underneath ferns three-shape       in-sign     sunfold of green flesh flutter   touch trace down lifeways                       skin paths of streamed sun                         how here           fog brushes       hill’s frond-feeling back   still,   ...

    I waited silent, then, long sought,   your vines twine up and round, down me oh cooled, your skin from sun   tensed stillness, all hairs sensate dew drawn on each tip   brushed by the deliberate crawl of your contact every inch in grasping presence   I inhale your light, exhale green life your thousand branches not withheld   fingers found light leaves gasped, uncurled   untaught, you knew where to tap a deep sap unknown, untasted sugars within me   your fruiting body waxes and bursts darkly overflowing lips   you wrap and flex in earth-shared skin you eclipse my world from my awareness   I who surrender to be smothered by you encircled in your soft vines    

    you feral flower whose honeyed voice found me, hue-called and beckoning living air, in my own day of blossom      

    You took me to your birch forest where your wind caressed and trembled me   O your white bark I was seen by your body’s eyes        

      under bath of silver feather-frond moon you moth stealing into me left shaken by your still-soft flight