A Ranger Rides These Fens Tonight

A ranger rides these fens tonight,

On a task eons old.

They’ve come to flood the land again.

They’ve come to break the world.

The veil of time is thinner here;

So they sail the ancient sea.

Marsh Harrier and Sparrowhawk.

Fen violet, bladderwort, marsh pea.

The Birching House and Manor d'Moor,

Navy scars on ancient soil.

But the land they take is primal land,

And the waters shall end their toil.

And the silver in these ivory halls,

Shall drown, be cast away.

Their palaces left to tired folks,

Our needs their riches pay.

When the waters come, old gods'll rise -

The faeries in the hills.

The straw men and the rusted ploughs,

And the creeping things that kill.

Lost kingdoms buried underfoot,

Shall be revived, shall live again.

And the seekers’ ships from across the sea,

Shall be loved and taken in.

When the waters come and floods rampage,

The ranger will stand back and sigh.

At the ending of the old way,

And the next one drawing nigh.

A ranger rides these fens tonight,

Peddling tales of freedom and peace.

And the people whisper among themselves.

And know it’s our secret to keep.

Knowing But All Unknowable

The ethereal mysts that cloud the unconsciousness

of a world built by human hand

but unreachable by human mind

of awe and wonder of an unreachable construct

both real and unreal

an explication of true joy and of true, truest mis’ry

a lens through which to view the world

to interpret and to feel

ecstasy and sublimity

a deep primordial terror of the unknowableness of our own mind

of the expanse of the world and the limits and the reach of reality herself

personified bounding, boundedness

that reaches, twists and ingrains

twists and is twisted

a timeless melody, harmony, united in song

dissonant yet all consonant

consonant yet all destructive

a great primordial belongingness

unreachable collective

entity beyond space itself

entity, entities, beingness beyond time

together but apart, untouching

unknowing but all seeing

deep twisting, twisted belongingness

to the place of all things

a home, a space, an embedding

embeddedness

with fingers outstretched

meeting in darkness

undaunted while in terror

and in terror of that which here faces

that which we have wrought and

which have wrought us

timeless creation and undyingness 

timelessness

infinity

captured in finite glory

by a mind shared across generations

fraught of danger and of fear

captured yet always escaping

and reaching beyond comprehension

with the unknowable eternity, infinity, reality or not

in twisted shadow

The World Is Ending

The world is ending.

Fires reign in the skies and

the Earth splits below us and

sends storms fast to kill us.

The world is ending.

And I seek comfort just,

of warm flame, cool rain and crevice in which

to spend my dying days.

The world is ending.

These Fens

Though I am of the sea,

of dockers and sailors of the western shore,

I take now, for time however short,

these eastern fens, as home

and hope that I would be so bless’d

as for them to take me as of theirs

Forever

A supernova is forever

Not in duration

But in light.

With a modern ship

One can match pace therewith

And watch the grand explosion

Play out across the stars

Forever, frozen in time.

But in truth

this can only last so long;

Eventually one must turn back

For fear of death

Or isolation

Or going astray

And when one returns

To that nova’s spot

There is left nought
But golden dust

The Wonders Of My Hand

There is one time I remember
More than any of the others
When one of the old folk came up to me
Dressed in a cloak numbering in years more
Than these eyes of mine have ever seen
“Have you been to that planet there?” he asked me
And pointed on the viewscreen, a short distance away
A small mark on the glass, a mere speck of dust
Against the galactic wall that lay behind.
He took my arm and pulled me closer to that screen
And made me stare long and hard into the little dot
And he described it with intense passion
Talking of waters blue, skies blue, eyes blue
Of forests green, grass green, skin green
Of blood red
Of rubble grey
There stands an ancient statue, he told me
A woman dressed in ancient robes
An ancient light in her hand
And her ancient skin rusted away

Memory

Earth, Museum World

Her first trip alone

(two stops, a transfer at Barnard's Star).
She wants to the see the wildland

Abandoned long ago

And hikes in long hauls (weeks at a time)
Across country ancient and hills rough.

The rubble caught her eye when in the wastes
Distracted her from the sky.

They’re scattered stones
All weathered and covered in moss

And when she put her hand to feel one

To touch its smooth side

It sank away 

And lost itself in the mud.