Lark & Merlin

1 a wren, perched on a hawthorn low enough to skip the scalping winds, sang a scalpel song seafrets drift sheer along shorelines listening to hail spray glass and wind and a waitress laugh in a cafe without customers I fell to fell thinking * * * a sullen light through vapor thins a line of hills the edge of everything is nothing whipped by wind watched on a webcam bound to a bedpost gag on my shaft rose blush of road-kill rabbit insides out on tarmacadam * * * cumulus in a tarn its fast shadow flees far hills a wave of sleek grass skiffs mist my hand thought of her a photograph waiting to happen * * * this come-to-kill wind rips at the root here she comes and there she goes rushes bow to rime I should shut down close off stop if I could how quick the mist how quick 2 my lover, the assassin, is beautiful she has come to kill me and I concur just now she sleeps but when she wakes I’m dead her eyelids flitter as I prepare her potions, her delicious poisons * * * as she flew past a lick of her melodic nectar stuck to my wing, making flight, for an instant, sticky but nothing preening couldn’t fix * * * she asked about my heart, its evasive flight; but can I trust her with its secrets? and does the merlin, in fast pursuit of its prey, tell the fleeing lark it is enamored of its song? or the singing lark turn tail and fly into the falcon’s talons? * * * my heart, the cartographer, charts to the waterline, is swept back as the tide turns wiping the map blank, wave after moon-drawn wave but it beats, my heart, of its own volition a lark sings winds rush reeds walking home I stride these tracks with her tread the blurred thumbprint of a smudged moon 3 it has gone on for days strumming rushes taking up tales, taking them on the fall of my foot, on tufts a stroke of light along a law lain in under a long cloud I accrete—lichen to limestone sphagnum to peat * * * late shadows gather in the dark words unwrite as they are written unspeak as they are spoken songs sprung from heart and lung to tongue unsung * * * drunk winds stumble over shuffling roofs shake his sleep who dreams a lost love will not let go recurring swirls of old gold blown light you can’t help but be in it as it opens and falls back on itself unfolds and unsays I do not want to die without writing the unwritten pleasure of water