Chris Murray

Fall

Hildegard of Bingen

I step gingerly over the place where you begged for your death,
remembering how sore my hand was
and thinking it then a rehearsal for the real.
I was not to be there, when it came.

My comfort is in your chairs,
the one in the little study of tired books.
The one which looked out onto morning and evening star.

I watch the limestone outcrop,

I watch the flame
in the limestone
the purple, the yellow,
the loose-strife.

Devil's bread grows on this land.

 
The Beach

Dragged impasto of seaweed
aches against silver waves.

I watch the wormholes
ferry their glitter of sand
in kaleidoscopes. 


Tree-Wheel

In the rain its knuckled bark
has the gloss of polish,

a bottle-green patina.
There isn't a skull-head for pivot,
tension is held in back of its palm
it fists into the soil,

raising it up.


The Little Shelves

Your willow-bound pentacle rests
in the small shelves, the not for-show shelves.
Books on music, astrology, maths,
their covers cracked.

Your pentacle was unhooked after your death.
its gone from its place on the wall.
Answering as it did a seed tied into string,
that someone brought to hang from the curtain rail.

I found your tattered ephemeris,
A Vision, by Yeats.

A lavender swatch dries down on the wooden sill
where your hand laid,
clawed. You tensed it as you showed me the men outside.