A Poem for Ciaran

The stroll from my cell along the path above the donkeys past a door open, a door shut and a strong smell of wood and cigarettes ends where music helps white marguerites cut through the masonry. * Dark for words with a clicking wren a yellow tit and over the clover a shovel and a rustle of grain. He’s training calves with shouts and food to follow him to another field before the second bell. * Broom loops over the buttercups. These names give birth to cones and needles, ferns with mini-sacs of pollen attached. It only takes one shot of spittle on green for my brother to explain the sexual life of the forest and honeybees. * Simon says he would like to live alone in a cottage with a garden, no humans, no obligations.  Solitary I prefer a pod while he likes hives. We confess we both wear armor outside our habitats. * Water was our first armor before our skin. Then came the bristle of sunshine. And a thickening of blood into oil or syrup in the lower veins. * I hate the thistledown covering my prototype now interior layer cowering at power or shout, but can laugh with the one who has sap under his skin pouring the bucket the hand is carrying. * Brother, help me find an animal who will rescue me from sharp delirium of fear beyond armor and my friends the birds by an open window:  to be clear would be wonderful. A sigh without the ghostly gasps that accompany a certain voice. Still I still do desire more of the kind no one can see or hear. Not that second, rasping breath of triumph. Find me instead more like the breathy Saint Bernard. But a little dog A cask of brandy hanging at his neck