post-beltane beltane post

The Levels, May Day (reprise)

i

Not a leaf moves; not a bird calls.

            I don’t know how long

we stare at each other.

            We don’t know how long we have.

           

There is a drumbeat passes

from cell to cell

             a hot wind hopscotching

                        over the synapses.

ii

Listen – somewhere there is a question

                        knocking      and knocking.

Silence your heart

            and listen

            with all of yourself.

iii

Winds and moons that drive you to madness

            and love

                        which is always a form of madness.

iv

            I stand in the stream’s conversation

bruised wild carrot and water mint

                        wild watercress peppery on my tongue

                                    the astringency of wood sorrel

buzzard lifting off from the broadcast drift of windflower and bluebell

            something squeaking in vain

                                                Bel is back in the watered sky

– and look, on the path, a glow-worm

            drab in the haze of daylight

                                    recharging its cells

            for its small terrestrial shining

                        its pinprick contribution

            to the sum of light in the world

v

            This will go on

                                    wherever you are

            wherever or whatever I am

                        or am not.

*


© Roselle Angwin, 2005



NOTES: this appears in All the Missing Names of Love, Roselle Angwin, IDP May 2012

Bel is an old name for the pagan sungod