Three Sonnets

360 words

In Hollow Hills

Until the world turns black upon the hill
The sleepers wait, within. The time must be
Right. Two ravens must fly. A horn blown, shrill
And high from within, must be heard. So we
Wait, like the wild hunter himself. We must wait
For the signs and sigils of impending
Days. For is not our destiny, our fate,
Linked with the hidden ones and with their king?
The time will come, because the time must come,
When these hills shall shift beneath their outer
Sleeves, as the deep buried continuum
Of all we once had and all we once were
Bursts forth—with ravens and with horns high blown
To claim the future’s birthright as its own.

(first appeared in New Witch)

Embla

I have no interest in your arches and
Your bells, your phallic spires that do not
Inspire so much as they intrude. Land
And sky was not intended to be what
Men build such interruptions on. I do
Not want to look North and see your slanted
Roofline and your cross before my eyes, to
Know that you have had your way, have planted
Your saints and your sinners in my world, that
Your stained windows corrupt my holy sun,
That your prayers tear my sacred vril. Hallstatt,
Stonehenge, Boleigh: deserted, defiled, done,
Their pagan souls attacked by your dark gods
Who came with words of love, but stayed at odds.

Old Garden on St. George Street

Shadows fall and darkened breezes send low
Chilly courses through the overgrown grass.
Thick masses of lost flowers, gone wild, and so
Tangled stem to stem they sway like one as
The dim grey air creeps across their waving
Stand — bringing red, then white, then red again
To light as evening draws down the paving
Stones that no longer are a garden’s lane.
All weeds now, or blossoms gone to weed.
There’s no raw beauty to this disarray,
Just growing darkness and a path in need
Of mending as the shadows take the day.
The ones who loved and made this place are dead.
Buried. New people bought it—cheap—instead.

(first appeared in Sommer and Other Poems)