Storms River:
Chaos Theory
C. J. Driver


     I watch the winter waves all day
To guess the places they'll start to gather up
And lift, and lift so slowly to the cusp
     Which hangs a moment as it breaks
In sudden downward curve of lighter green
     Before the backward spray of spume
          Which tags the wave
Appends a rainbow briefly to its edge.

     Though gravity has not yet trapped
The further stars in ordered evidence
(For light allows I may not see them now
     Where curves the fleeting universe)
This random music in my head includes
     The rainbow, cusp and spray,
          The light and stars,
The wave's return, the certain night to come.

Wilderness:
Written on Water
C. J. Driver


The sheen of dying wind
Across the lake —
The darkling light
As light delights the air
(The language knows so much beyond oneself)

The web of weaving wind
Across the lake —
The water light
Of silver shining air
(The language knows so much beyond oneself)

We think of something lost
In writing down
The flux of time:
But what completes our thought?
(The language knows so much beyond oneself)

The thread of meaning lost
In noting down
That fleeting time:
Precise the moment caught
(The language knows so much beyond oneself)

Beyond the Red River
Thomas McGrath


The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,
And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass
Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,
Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.

A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,
A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses
Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping
An aging whiskey of distances and departures.

Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.
My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.
I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,
Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.

The Archeopteryx's Song
Edwin Morgan


I am only half out of this rock of scales.
What good is armour when you want to fly?
My tail is like a stony pedestal
and not a rudder. If I sit back on it
I sniff winds, clouds, rains, fogs where
I'd be, where I'd be flying, be flying high.
Dinosaurs are spicks and
all I see when I look back
is tardy turdy bonehead swamps
whose scruples are dumb tons.
Damnable plates and plaques
can't even keep out ticks.
They think when they make the ground thunder
as they lumber for a horn-lock or a rut
that someone is afraid, that everyone is afraid,
but no one is afraid. The lords of creation
are in my mate's next egg's next egg's next egg,
stegosaur. It's feathers I need, more feathers
for the life to come. And these iron teeth
I want away, and a smooth beak
to cut the air. And these claws
on my wings, what use are they
except to drag me down, do you imagine
I am ever going to crawl again?
When I first left the crag
and flapped low and heavy over the ravine
I saw past present and future
like a dying tyrannosaur
and skimmed it with a hiss.
I will teach my sons and daughters to live
on mist and fire and fly to the stars.

The Marriage of Psyche
Kathleen Raine


1. The House

In my love's house
There are hills and pastures carpeted with flowers,
His roof is the blue sky, his lamp the evening star,
The doors of his house are the winds, and the rain his curtains.
In his house are many mountains, each alone,
And islands where the sea-birds home.

In my love's house
There is a waterfall that flows all night
Down from the mountain summit where the snow lies 
White in the shimmering blue of everlasting summer,
Down from the high crag where the eagle flies.
At his threshold the tides of ocean rise,
And the porpoise follows the shoals into still bays
Where starfish gleam on brown weed under still water.

In sleep I was born here
And waking found rivers and waves my servants,
Sun and cloud and winds, bird-messengers,
And all the flocks of his hills and shoals of his seas.
I rest, in the heat of day, in the light shadow of leaves
And voices of air and water speak to me.
All this he has given me, whose face I have never seen,
But into whose all-enfolding arms I sink in sleep.


2. The Ring

He has married me with a ring, a ring of bright water
Whose ripples travel from the heart of the sea,
He has married me with a ring of light, the glitter
Broadcast on the swift river.
He has married me with the sun's circle
Too dazzling to see, traced in summer sky.

He has crowned me with the wreath of white cloud
That gathers on the snowy summit of the mountain,
Ringed me round with the world-circling wind,
Bound me to the whirlwind's centre.
He has married me with the orbit of the moon
And with the boundless circle of the stars,
With the orbits that measure years, months, days and nights,
Set the tides flowing,
Command the winds to travel or be at rest.

At the ring's centre,
Spirit or angel troubling the still pool,
Causality not in nature,
Finger's touch that summons at a point, a moment
Stars and planets, life and light
Or gathers cloud about an apex of cold,
Transcendent touch of love summons world to being.

The Snow Light
May Sarton


In the snow light,
In the swan light,
In the white-on-white light
Of a winter storm,
My delight and your delight
Kept each other warm.

The next afternoon—
And love gone so soon!—
I met myself alone
In a windless calm,
Silenced at the bone
After the white storm.

What more was to come?
Out from the cocoon,
In the silent room,
Pouring out white light,
Amaryllis bloom
Opened in the night.

The cool petals shone
Like some winter moon
Or shadow of a swan,
Echoing the light
After you were gone
Of our white-on-white.

crazy jay blue
e e cummings


crazy jay blue)
demon laughshriek
ing at me
your scorn of easily

hatred of timid
& loathing for( dull all
regular righteous
comfortable )unworlds

thief crook cynic
( swimfloatdrifting
fragment of heaven )
trickstervillain

raucous rogue &
vivid coltaire
you beautiful anarchist
( i salute thee