You read strangely wound letters in the
noble

dead silence of a deep dumb worth we
wrote

in pulsations of faith and flash'd doubts
dwelling

where each of the letters had scriven well
those

leaves that kept an alphabet mess defiantly
a tree

of unbroken branches the hidden tongue
spoke

strange in words silently: the chroi - love
vapour

defying the cry and defining our changed
bark

the cow bard whirring in a thought snare
otherworldly

words keenly sought along the track to a
source

of suggestive force you made words with
enobling

letters wound in the line all seek as one

and you read strangely

~

The day one often remembers, when from sleep
we first awoke and found ourselves reposed
under a shade of flowers, wondering if here
a distant murmuring sound of water composed
our soul-touched star reflecting on a moonlit
sea: nothing hard or rough but sweet beneath
the tranquil sky; Manannán mac Lír, foaming
horse-water deity riding his plain,
the ancient mist of mythical man, four square
his white wave hoof shod wet in sodden feet
of sand and sea grain counting many
the snow flake lit upon a shore line during
winter storms our voyage sets out to overcome,
galloping free from that we doze out through,
to the star reflecting on a moonlit sea.
~
Wet deity in a drop of meadow dew in May

our inner spring of time the grass-stone
hail-blade tramples under horses' hoof:
Manannán mac Lír, son of the seas' reflection
in tranquil lunar moonlight, the reversing

words that roar clear, rowing to a stone
the Land of Women crying for love sight,
you wash in a hundred sounds of music sung
- Manannán - beneath a foaming sky water,
horse of four hooves wave-shod, trodden
white sea of grain count and sand flake,
lined in the hoof-light: Manannán mac Lír
stir the sea like it is your blood.
~
Bring a silver apple branch from Emhain's
far island, in an ocean to the west of us
Manannán horses circle, fair Son of Lír;
delight of a plain eye host of chariot racing
on the white silver steed South beyond
Imagination, blossoming bird in tree lore
of common delight: gently spell a shining
voice, colour the cloud-music sung in tir
na og and work where we got drunk and stayed
that way: the night waking soundless
at four
soundless
at three
two
soundless
at
one
and
aquamairne orb of lunar-lit will; be Manannán mac Lír
stir
time's curtain winding left round a land
of purple leaf-lit myth
edge connecting tree light lovers unloved and empty
in te grass of heaven
laid smooth below a green bank,
look

into the clear smooth lake that seems
soul-bent sky within a shape
passing among us
and them
sometimes
wanting to speak and not speak of sidhe dreams
vanished
into their nut-reality resting in our demense
now;
speak the unspeakable
impase.
~
No keening or treachery here, eternity
the familiar tilled land of music striking
all ear without death grief sickness: sorrow
or weakness, but faith that is a sign
of Emhain's uncommon wonder, in silver wet
rain drops caressing the turtle shell,

pure ocean cliff in a warm sunrise hosting
weather-sport racing over eternal eastern
plains where the game of death and ebbing
tide do not come coloured in an overcoming
wave to crush the stór and grá in our still
well, silver blood, sometimes lighting
an army of three times fifty far off islands
beyond imagination
we sometimes
it happens
impose impossible odds on
the siege-bound hung in a carving behind
the mask of relief returning goodness
raked from hell tower hall razed counter
when walking as the well sprite your water
lacquers gold, our daemon Boann decorated
sympathetically: head obverse and swollen

strain of Neith's tale and the heads Dementer
demand we deliver in an acorn brooch
measured in patterned wetness, sometimes
blossoming under our window,
wood and hidden hill of letters all decaying
spelling
as it happens, good friend,
sometimes
when it happens
you
the friend in a friendship passed and gone
in the day spent lost among them at a holy well.