Summer Solstice

Sleek, sorcerous, with sulphur eyes,
Fierce-feral, dappled Bacchus traces
The silver threads of mortal lives;
He treads the spiral dance, he paces
The labyrinth of lost embraces.
Romance made manifest, he charts
The entrance to grimalkin hearts.

The maenad’s manic cry enfires
Colourless Blackfriars faces,
And Oak of Litha, dryad-duir,
Strides o’er the streets, and shadow sires
Clinging vines or verdant ivy, bringing
Wine’s bright flush to city places and sighs
To city matrons’ throats, and tingling
Of sweet delight to dormant thighs.

On Primrose Hill the smoke of dawn
Hangs in the air as drifting incense.
I am reborn and face the morn
Artless, bare, stripped of pretence.
From hallowed hedgerows his deep cadence
Precedes his rising, and his presence
Overwhelms me. With love I shiver
To see my shriver, and that quiver
Invites his power.
As others cower
His sacred fire
Burns on its pyre
My fragile hesitance.
And in that dance
My inward wants
Against my will –
No; with it still -
Are all of immanence.