Alchemisland

Road between Woodenbridge and Avoca magical in the snow

Red kites like pinioned hieroglyphs gliding in antient triumph by peerless cliffs

Fog like liquid fills up the dips, out from which flit bats and linnets in Spring

O’er mine-pocked hills, where once Wicklow miners traced shim’ring rilles

As grille and grid the moon’s half-hid facade

Rivers clogged with old gold traces

Which drove the local men of those places mad with lust, they went out panning

And most went bust without ever handling anything substantial

It was like a scene from some fatefully-named canyon in the old frontier States

In November the seen breath of feathered friends is like drakesmoke

By bare-boughed bends birds deep diving pursuing fleet eels Ur-ly from the Sargasso Sea

Plumed goosanders like men fantastically helmed in the ages of Actium or Alexander

In rogue, throbbing action, teleporting, there then here then there again, strobing

In the fast-flowing rivers the patrolling birds are robed for spurning Winter

Down rebel-familiar hills

Spellborne mists hiss to mystery unlife near old and secret bogs

Where in dawn ages gold-adorned kings of corn nipple-shorn were bludgeoned

A rolldown fog fills the deer-marked dell bottoms

And occulted culverts where fox lovers converse like banshees

Settling at last like face-masking cauls to cover owl-haunted passes 

Here I have settled and at last feel settled

In the loudness of settling frost some acceptance

Gain for agreed loss.