Milton’s Well
Predestination stopped her on the road,
speeding in some overcommitment,
racing impetuous down green skylines,
pushing the envelope of the just-possible.
On an S bend with reversed camber,
on a suspicious twist of black ribbon,
fate overturned her world at sixty-five,
crushed a tin bubble with fluffy toys.
And she crawled out of a smoking hell
to stand on skid-marked tar, broken.
Just out of sight, hearing the sirens,
lamentations of the ambulance, he,
heretic, regicide and divorcee,
sits by the water, blind and reflecting,
rebel angel after the Restoration. Now
God sprawls on his Cavalier throne again
after the civil war in the earthly paradise,
when sweet Oxfordshire was Lucifer’s
hiding place along the burning lake,
when tyranny was taking back the sky.
The warts on the round face of Satan,
the bogus sainthood of the king,
the cannonades of both sides, bring
sickness to the soul. His lips move.
Eve, still holding the keys of ignition,
writes in copperplate as his whisperv
interrupts the dictation of the river,
gentle sound that goes on forever,
poetry of water running over stones.
Garden As Launch-Site
Purple octane flowers that rocket to the sun,
amazing vapour trail mounting skyward at noon
through the perfumed stratosphere of gardens,
over the soft green skin of the natural world,
you are a blast of sweetness from vast engines,
a firing of energy in silence, incredible
soundless explosion of flowering sunships lifted.
Where drunken butterflies of seven weeks
act like fins to guide the lavender upwards,
where astronaut bumblebees ride nose cones,
buzzing with the message of a joyful lifework,
you are weightlessness without responsibility,
gravitation of the aristocratic planet.
And travelling through magnolia forests,
stopping to rest in aerial beds of spearmint,
I climb through realms of fire in amazement,
transported into fantastic regions of summer
Little River Road
Running beside the lighted window,
heart of valedictions, you raced.
Desperate to lengthen one second,
you ran, victim of distances, lost.
And when you followed the small lights away,
heart out of reach you went down.
Cold heart, bluff of a liar,
O then you opened your gates.
In at your gates came a wind crying out:
Open your gates to the night.
Out of your vast night came the one
only named remorse.
Easier, with your deep red churning,
to race with him than change the past.
And all that night, unbearable way,
on broken stones you ran.
Where is the road for you, strange one
who would outdistance light?
Try forever to circle back.
Know that you never can.
