Poems from Cold Harbour
Harm and the Man
That bone skimming my flesh as I reach for you mid- fall is called the ilium. Too close to the surface of your skin it must have been cold and you quite starved as you hunkered among echoes and the scent of resin in the belly of the horse. Alert for an opening. This time after such an absence there are no burning towers only a woman who is reduced to watching you vanish even as you come close but does not run from the treachery of your dwindling arms.
from the sequence The Greenwood Speaks: Twelve Trees of Ogham
Hazel
Loved by him whose wand of hazel is entwined by sinuous serpents prized by druids and by dowsers who divine the springs of wisdom: fat with knowledge are the salmon pliant as the hazel branches which overhang the well of Connla let their fruits fall in the waters. Thoughts move swiftly as quicksilver through the minds of those who eat them.
Rowan
On a rowan wheel, spin life’s thread. Drive your sheep through a rowan hoop. To keep a ghost from wandering, with berried branches stake the dead. Deck your milk shed with white flowers. Guard your boat from the whip of the wave and the door of your house with a rowan sprig. Carve your runes on a rowan stave.