New poem
The Forest Library
Unread, the forest library,
rooted in dark earth of words,
grows yearly, incrementally,
round heartwood’s deep primordial hoards
where each tree’s leaves are folios
of vast collections
with yellowed cuttings fallen across
round stumps of lecterns
and all through its voluminous tracts,
marked only by the indices
weevils scrawl on bark-bound book backs
in shady aisles and galleries,
the breeze passing beneath its eaves,
its quiet cloisters,
releases from its mighty beams
the sound of voices.
New poem
A Nightsong of Eichendorff
I wandered late by rock and tree,
the moon crept out so secretly
behind its cloak of cloud;
and here and there in the dark vale
the fleeting moonbeams bleached ghost-pale
a nightingale sang loud.
Far off, the torrent’s silver song
ran over stone unseen, nightlong,
transmuting the moonlight.
My thoughts, mercurial, argentine,
seemed more the woods and hills’ than mine
in the phantasmal night.