The Crone of the Westward Hunch

Image from Mickey Shannon Photography

The Crone of the Westward Hunch

For her Eastern twin went searching

And beneath her no road rushed

And none was long kept waiting

She took the lonely mountain paths

And the cowherd’s grassy trail

Towns and thoroughfares she passed

By day and starlight pale

Though her patient crutch tapped slower

Than it had in younger days

She gave greeting to each traveller

Who continued on their way

Rare was the one who, pausing

Heard more than the branches sigh

In a wind down from the highlands

When the Westward Crone was nigh

Advertisements

Venus Shipwrecked

What pitch of entropy, what glassy trumpet call

The roar and rolling of a mindless sea

Drowning men of words and beasts of calm

No constant but constant mercury

–

Shatter there upon the rocks and rise again

To resound, a death knell for death’s rest

That peace which might have been our lot

Between cauldron’s boil and thorny crest

–

What fury roused and left unanswered!

What ardor, fear, and stark unknowing

Whether fighting the swell or drifting apart

She holds us – ever sinking, ever floating

 

Ksarveel

Ksarveel, splayed fingers,

and breath arrested, staring

through the void both near and far,

in alien lights yet glistening

she recalls the warmth of a star

But there Earth’s detritus spinning

about a whorl of Lethe’s conception

rocks and silky gravel hissing

without sound upon the Sun’s extinction

all about its inky heart and rim

She, naught but ambient life

in food plucked and flesh contrived

knows death by nanoseconds of non-light

bursting lungs through photons sinking

from star to maw, from day to night

Out the window

Her heart softens over the hedgerows

And she tells him less than she feels

Between streetlights flashing warm and cold

The empty highways through the snow

Months wherein her mouth has closed

She paints the smoking pines, alone

 

 

Separately

He audits life with his mother

And plays cards with his father

Separately

 

He leaned in for a kiss

On the cheek, a crossette

To seal her answer

 

He never imagined they would become

Like his father and his mother

Cameo Shadow

Forsake me, but I shall keep

A cameo onyx and silver

Nestled among sheets

In my oaken chest

Then your shadow will not stray

From the foot of my bed, you

With your white face

And golden brow

Only remember me in donning

Your gown like a night river

And whisper in passing

A word for me

 

Yesterdays

I smelled the heartache coming

When I saw her smiles

Becoming yesterdays

Then I scrambled

With hands like a sieve