1.

INVOCATION

Bury me alive in cups of wine,
& let your antic nightcap
sing the ancient song of moon folk
that usher low thoughts out of me
with their dances whirling and dervish.

Black and blue.

2.

MOTHER

Your mother hunted for days,
squinting for the sight of you
in predawn twilight stillness:
in the peeling back of hovering night, 
with the diamond of the horizon,
half shell Venus over distant black sea.

On the sixth day
from a dusty forest floor 
came the third in the family.
& then the evening & the morning
& the mother took a rest.

The seventh day.

3.

BIRTH

The ruffian scowl
on your face 
cased in caul & blood—
not a sound came forth
from those lips I’d come to kiss
a thousand times.

The ruffian glanced at the room 
fists turned in, apelike,
knees bent as if to spring
from a hole, a little trudging faerie 
in solemn Queen-like protestation.

Salute.

4.

NIGHTMARE

Scutterput she is
in a deserted forest blanket 
covered in webs.
Such spiders speak in screeches, 
& sibilant whispers, gasps
frantic —as a bat

hanging in the trees,
& I never dreamed they’d take me,
never dreamed this of my own child—

that she would eat me alive.  

5.

FOOD/CODA

Looking for blueberries, we find
before sky dawns
there is a blanched tint 
like the ghostly mycelium 
and a blue within black
which holds the moon before
it dips to bathe in water.

Above the coast, laughing
we tripped in the barrens
of the shadow of the mountain,
sprigs of heather guiding 
our lumbering falls,
and a cluster of wild blueberries

arising
with luscious red leaves
almost as if we could eat them
with the heavenly mushrooms reaching
upward to greet us

in the dark.