Felled, The Intimate Earth (lyrics)
Ember Dream
I laid with hyphae
worm and root in a serotinal tide.
Chthonic yawping
cradle song
till the creaking of the rime.
I rouse as Aleuria, fruiting
body aflame aground.
A mycelial vixen trailing
autumn as she roams.
Ruddle-wrought by bleeding
tooth, I hunt
for a salamander blaze.
A burrowed-down bonfire bright
as rosehips on the shore.
I close my ears to hear
the swell, smoke-wind sour
in my throat.
Sea road heavy in my bones, with gravid pith
I sleep and rove.
Fire Season on the Outer Rim
Kindling from the valley, flames
falling like snow
bewitched. Dog Days
rust and bonefire grit, the setting sun
bleeds through the sky.
Hunger preying
like Bluebeard
smoking, choking the chamber
awaits.
Pay heed to the need
of moths.
Know their flight: fire
and flee.
Salt and wood and ash and tree
salt for sea and wood for burning
ash for fire and hex for tree.
Shifting scales, salt and ash
heaping high in my palms.
I speak the language
of fog, the skies
speak in smoke.
Westward the pull
of my bones, my marrow-map home.
Night calls the bleeding
sun down, but the fire
stays bright. Embers like river
stones burn
the lake high again.
Skies are red.
The Rite of Passage
Gloaming light, wild
wind roaming low.
Port of the storm-loom
door threaded with snow
beckons me
to the threshold
compass rose reckoning
there the frost-rite gnaws and draws me
westerly, oceanbound
mountain-maw wakening
communitas of spark and spuming sea.
Tongue cut from magpie
lung of scrub jay
consume
root and rhizome
alpine sacra
taken in the cold limen’s thrall.
Ludic threshold
compass rose reckoning
there the frost-rite gnaws and draws me
westerly, oceanbound
mountain-maw wakening
communitas of spark and spuming sea.
Unravelling storm, green
light gloaming anew.
Port of the salt-sprawl
door fading to snow
beckons me home.
Sphagnum in the Hinterlands
I arrive as if a ghost, sphagnum
flesh tinder-dry.
Homecoming is
a slow unknowing, a rite
of rituals. Leaving was
a burial, an effigy of blood-drunk
moss. A bogself
memorial to unearth
at my return.
I slept with hex and peat
in a salt and marrow tide.
Chthonic helix
barrow-song till the bone-blaze
burning died.
I roamed through smoke and sun
rosehip wolf on the run.
Mnemonic chanting alpine-song
till the season is
undone.
I sink down supping
from the body I once was...
Effigy
bogwomb’s rending, bloodbound
to the sea
ebb, rise
ghost road wending till
the mending’s end.
The Salt Binding
Homelorn and hunting
I crawl along the shore.
Brackish my windrose, yet
bound by ember lore.
Salt-sprawl restore me
kelp-rite unmoor me.
Estuary
in me
veinrill and sea.
Catch the silt
as it dissipates,
swallow sand as it retreats.
Taste the brack as
it enters your body, as
you grieve.
In the wind, on the tides
under bloodthrall to
the moon. At the shore, but not
the end, your story
carries on.
Syzygy,
tidal wedding, brinebound
to the sea.
Ebb, rise,
green road wending till
the ending’s end.