Changelings

We lurch into a shroud of dewy rain,
distorting Greyhound windows into green
and brown oil-paintings flecked with sheep.
The clotted air, our faces dull as stone
give allusion to an older age;
even the young smell ancient on this isle.

Although we move as one, we're each an isle
within our heads; our thoughts fall soft as rain
and trickle down into a distant age
of Lughnasadh upon the hills of green,
of tribal dances, bonfires, and of stone-
walled castles, each besieged with sheep.

Along the narrow road lie six dead sheep,
their bodies fertilizing dirt. This isle
is but a floating, life-encrusted stone,
and stones push up in graveyards in the rain--
fixed and ashen gardens-- while the green
grass sprouts and fades, age after age.

The rocky shores and fields seem without age,
touched only by the placid drifts of sheep
that snip the narrow tips of blades of green.
Below the sheep, the dirt, the Emerald Isle
lives timelessly, and only drops of rain
will touch the fae that doze beneath the stone.

We study, analyze, and turn to stone
these living sprites and nymphs of ancient age,
while we, the flesh and blood melt into rain,
fade into shades. We're changelings here, and sheep
one day will tread over our wings; the isle
has drawn us all beneath the stone, the green.

The transformation now, from grey to green
is etched upon our faces, chiseled stone.
And when our ashen bodies fly the isle,
our spirits, far beneath, will cease to age.
Although we leave the ocean, leave the sheep,
at Lughnasadh we'll dance in Irish rain.

And still the Emerald Isle, veiled in green,
washes her fae with rain beneath the stone,
till changelings rule the age... along with sheep.

Ode to an Old Book

The words are wearing
from your spine
in sober gradient,
resolutely raven at the opening “S,”
but trailing to a barely-brown
just fifteen letters later.
Still, your hardy spine supports
six-hundred pages,
yellowing and smelling of vanilla,
dust, and antique sweat.
I thrust my nose
and lips and cheeks
into the lusty center of you,
gasping like I might inhale
the very punctuation
set upon your grainy paper.