'A Woman Unconscious'...Wakes?

White Goddess lines open coffin
With her hair trimmings &
Tarred crow feathers
 
The silent woman
Smites her womb
Exciting waters to be broken.

In final breath of water
She becomes a lake
Sailed by nightjar holy tremblings.

Until
Ancestral ghosts bequeath
Unto him, the white sheet,
Crisply ironed as bank manager’s shirt:
The burnt fox in his once dream
Shrouds earthen existence
Paints the portal obsidian
Of each poetic homecoming.

Earthed thistle prickles skin
Of rustication quietude,
First bleat-breath of lamb
Comes from nowhere -
Electric shock shudders
Over rib railings.
Placenta trail road-kill.

From Punic wars to Khmer Rouge
Humanity is jaw boned, broken,
Creaks below charcoal lips
Mouths stuffed fire and brimstone,
An always incipient wreath.
/
Of just another holocaust
/
Time retreats -
Thresher sifts flesh and bone -
Leaving events as landmines.

By the stone wall
That was chapel once
The last swallow sings
Recital of rejoice to entice
The wild man of the woods.
He lumbers into vision
In wake of underfoot
                          twig explosion.
The wolf survives for the earth.

Lilac leaves ornate his beard
Universal spectator in the cheap seats;
Twilight bathes the knife
Romulus murdered Remus
In Oedipal rage; pre-mortem page
Of poetess Electra epilogue.

Leaves of lilac wrap a golden bough
A shadow clocks bracken and brook,
Drift of gilt ghost o’er sodden heath:
Lost in poetry mist of another…..
 
….And suddenly found himself
At the end of the red brick road
Curled in unopened birthdays,
An ellipsis to eclipse anniversaries of pain
Shade wounds wrought in winter sun.

Words plough into hospital bed
Shakespeare’s sister dreams a sonnet
Inscribes on pillow
For the woman in the bed.
 
Wires
Tubes
Antiseptic
Theatre
Will she awake as beast?

White Goddess lines open coffin
With her hair trimmings &
Tarred crow feathers                  and finally, her body