Perhaps there’s mercy in the skies,

the forsythia touches the moon.Of all the signs of the zodiaccancer rises over her brow,wrinkled for thirty-seven years.Then the constellation fades,the sun burns the weeds on the lawnuntil suddenly they are green.

howling at the moon and stars,delighting in the knee-deep snow,and in the purity of the pack,while the wise red fox hunts alone.

Bullfinches bathe in dust along the path.Two hedgehogs mate. A crow attempts to sing.The cherries bloom until you see an orchardand in a puddle snowdrops touch the sky.Then, when you least expect, you reach your goal.Your heart stops, and you fall towards your shadow.

the streets of London burn,and yet, despite the fire,the bobbies watch and turntheir visored faces away,as if deaf, blind and dumb,and England not lost its way.Two thousand twelve has shownthat you are right again.Forced to beg and undress,still-lifed on a smart phone,men bow and women bendin multi-cultural fright.Gone is the wilderness,gone your voice in the…

that I found lay martyred beyond its death.The holy sun was rising in the East,and I was watering bright illusionsas sweet and as old as Plato and Christ.Birds in arbours were making allusionsto Eden, and I was bound for a trystwith a seamstress, with Angel Jones of Mold.But the writhing and the buzzing woke meand…

but tell me nothing of the girl he wedwhile serving in the Tsar’s Imperial Guard,tell me nothing of the six sons she boreduring the Great War and Revolution,and nothing of the hellish years he spent,a prisoner-slave in Kolyma’s mines.Like Midas, all he touches turns to gold—the leaves are fallen sons and memories,the numbers on his…