Let blackberries stain my prayers
my lips be kissed with frost and argent snows
and in rags taggle run
ice pricked
my lover no one shall know
Let owls be bridesmaidens
rings be smoke from viking pyres
and in the ashes find the emerald heart
of all desires
Creep they small, the purple lights
of finland fell,
creep they low over stiles
keep they to themselves
eating butter and salt from the meadows.
They go away far, they go with me
at twilight to make a portal jump
by the cedars in a long dead countery
in a kingdom of bells and spells
of necromancy
in a kingdom of smiles and wax bees
to reach it, you must burn away
to return you can not leave it ever.........
at the incline, the pass from england and weather
its there you enter,
besotted
and stained with rowanberry wine,
cowslip mead
cloudberrys orange as apricots
elderflower laces and knots.
Over there with cream that clots
and blackberry wine,
rosehips, tasty lips
bow low to lovely cows
see them under the waves
with Oisin.
Brambles, rasp and clasp,
salmonberry, strawberry blue
huckleberry shadberry beach plum
pomegranate sump
himalayan yellow, turkestan black
buffalo berry and wineberry, hack
shepherd and boysen and tay and may
take me to loganberry far far away.
Return me never to the light of day

Berry Wine...C.B.E., 1999

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