Push sagacious eyes beyond

the tattooed patterned coating –

disregard the holy flesh

and seek within,

without . . .

I am wearing my life

like the gecko dons its skin –

ready to split at a moment’s notice

and leave all behind in the past.

I crossed over in the night for the very first time –

just floated serene and lonely

on coffee-brown water that lapped at my raft, unfelt.

I was not so much frightened as stricken with awe –

full of no earthly sensation

but the rushing of time, propelling me on and on.

Then at some exact moment –  the slate horizon

cracked like a splintering egg-shell

and strange orange light bled through the fissures of dark.

It was not yet my time.

A return to earth

for tending and restoration

is simply another phase

on the journey of Self.

I refuse to vanish or set

when gravity tugs me to earth

in a blaze of gore or glory –

to wane to nothingness beyond

a slice of ashen promise –

And I will not slide quietly by

a masculine smothering of power –

for the damage will already be done.

Have you seen how moonlight blazes so hard

it slips beyond any brute shadow?

(Painting: Victor Florence Pollett)

This is the womb of the world

where two seas collide

at a hammock of land

and bony rocks arch

in the jet blood-black spray.  Three

mythical crone stones –

who see what sharp lips never

tell – still watch through

their ageless snake hair for the

goings of they that

once crawled from their legs in the

primeval salt-dawn of time.

Likewise a novel

Grown from the roots of history

Is nurtured to life.