Garin Hay

        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  

     for my father https://shermanhay.format.com/         Now from under cloud-heights   sea rosed white light-ghosts   in wave-sheet shatter-shine     sea        for me forever yours                 shored ancestors, sandstone-locked,   wrestle and twine          arched in contest   hip-contoured, back or breast weird   eroding, exposing saga               stone folded, bowing      etched self-symbolizing   together spray-fall hands            beat salt thunder,   clasped turned slab         warp mineral,   unfill shore-worn heads ...

   for my father https://shermanhay.format.com/           To come into the awareness of the gift given to again      be open to receive what might unfold find and enter the art to give back out of myself               yours and this       particular self’s art       To find means to keep living our shared world to live ascending               to you and this       To delight in that in which you delighted to recount what you opened for me               these     bright directions       Again finding you where no one else would find you still hearing your voice in our house, yes but also anywhere else...