For * N o r t h *

* S O R R O W * is only when you're waiting for the light to come back. 

trust

you carry l i g h t 
in your crackled hands
and i wait for morning
to shine its first moon glow
in through the winter
w h i t e
of day

Any storm

Your eyes find cluster constellations

that mine can't quite map, yet.

Smoke fills the evening sky

as Jupiter shines down

on the icy bogside;

december's first night.

Ink on skin finds points

of no return;

moons in every phase to come.

Talk of caravans and lists

on damp paper

fill your kitchen

with hope and confusion.

And then you ask me

for 'Scaffolding',

and I know our wall 

will weather any storm;

any storm that comes.

Meirge

Last night I dreamed
of heavy rain
-decaying, rhythmic, beautiful,
pounding on an old tin roof.
That northern sky, dark as buried mines,
filled slowly with rusty green dancers;
every lamp in the house was lit.

Foraging

Light lingers,
like the smell of thyme
on that newly born mountain.

Spring, fresh as birth/
wild as oak,
holds her tune.

Our river,
mysterious and ancient as the night,
rushes forth.

The past is younger than our fading youth.
I gather my mornings in close
and pick harebells in the evening's white glow.

Heidagaes

Eyes shut to the yellow-grey glow
above the icy, new-born land,
I feel the sea mist rise up from the South.

One tin hut below us
- the only sign of our print upon the land.

Fyll encircle the cliff, returning to colonial nests
in a cacophony of guttural cries;
ownership and instinct.

The rain has made the lichen seem brand new;
wet orange paint on old, decaying wood.
The smell of thyme fills the air
and I find arctic river beauty;
spongy and filled with light.

Stillness takes hold, delicately,
and words are lost to the North Atlantic breeze
that carries a perfect skein of Heidagaes
above this folkloric cliff.

West

Iceland

Iceland, Spring 2014.

Words and drawings.

West

Paths wind and meander
through passes made from ice and saga;
a fierce and fragile beauty.

Moss, greener than growth ,
covers volcanic rock;
spills onto damp paper
-circles in Icelandic clay.

Light, white as time/
soft as morning;
stillness atop ancient triangles.

Feathers on wet basalt
as time refracts off
blue spring;
life.

You stand beside a map of glacial water
as I collect elements
in my ice cold hands.

Milk flower

February, once more,
and the World is hopping/
outside of one circle,
into the next;
new beginnings.

The sky- red peach
-awakening to the
deep call of crows
at the first frost of morning.

Saint Bride has carried
back the light
on the wings of the oyster catcher
and the islands
are painting their hills
green in gratitude.

I fill my room with lavender
and sea thistle
in brown medicine bottles;
A botanical apothecary of life.

You send words to me
across a stormy sea
and I remember the wild flowers
of Inch island
in August's haze.

But the light is changing/
resurfacing/ reflecting
and all around of us
will be translated
into other words;
written on the wind.

I dress in white, again
and welcome back the snowdrops;
graciously