It was a time of laurels,

a fearless time. I broke away

to write – bed in the woods,

on the river a moon of ice.

Nights unsealed and the knot of

sleep slipped, a beat into waking.

We stepped into a maze of hedges,

each leaf a flower then wings

lifting, that would have lifted me.

A border of tulips stood up

like a row of varnished nails

and I was glad of your company.

taste it. Sacs of green sap showed

our faces, multiple and convex

as in a hall of mirrors. Our mouths

kissed and merged, stretched

to grimaces. We had touched it

and it would remember us, an X

A field of forget-me-nots

were stars, deep as blue; we moved

through a see-through radiance

the texture of honeycombs,

honey-scented, like a thought

unvoiced at the back of the throat.

where we abandoned our skins.

How mossy the ground was,

a green bed for entwining;

a spring ran down to a pool

of brightness where water lilies

budded to pink hearts that opened

as birds in the boughs above us.

Mouths of silver uttered a lament

from a grove of birch and hazel,

a sympathetic music.

As dark faltered towards first light

we made a meal of herbs and fungi.

A wood grew above and around us,

ash and elder running the span

of seasons through berry and seed,

naked as grief, then back to green.

In the distance a chestnut eye

and a chestnut thigh winked:

Let's be clear: this was no Eden

but a journey into the mind

and where the mind goes, gliding

beyond the shores of its ocean

finding another beyond it.