Sourcing

Come to me in the days of your love,
When the sap is rising
To summer where this year may prove
Quite surprising,

Come to the spring of water
By my dwelling-place,
Quiet my crying flesh until our laughter
Trickles through the grass;

Under a clear blue sky
In warmth and peace
I will open all my doors,
Every window that there is,

Where the pen flowers as the rose
And the mouth like a lily,
You shall explore the tropics
Of my other valley

And take me to the source of that great river
Which all men seek, now and for ever

Copyright © Charlotte Appleton 2003

Dedication

When I think of you my whole body
Starts singing flutes of bone and drums of cell
To reach out for your hand and draw you in
And penetrate your whorl of listening

As you out-ride me in your fierce embrace
And take me where my passion gasps for air
And finds its second wind in your own grace
Far out of sight, from my own mind so far

That my own words are ended by your kiss,
That my own moves are melted by your touch,
That my own will is nothing made by this,
I have become the one I love so much,

I have become a brand in a great fire,
A drop of water in an arctic sea,
So cold and hot for you and your desire
There is no form or name for you and me,

Nor shame of time that holds us in its sway,
For whilst we dance to music without space
There is no birth or death to stain our day,
But only the communion of increase

Where one and one make one which holds us all,
The million lives and the perpetual.

Copyright © Charlotte Appleton 2003

A Definition of Love

Love is the culmination of thought and where thought ends
As a discrete occurrence, losing its separation
From the organic fact of existence as a creature
Of flesh and blood, and going beyond that matter
In the act of reproduction or sacrifice or creative work
Of one sort or another for the good of the rest
Of the living, winning, enabling much more than survival.

Hate is the degradation of thought and where thought ends
As a discrete occurrence, losing its separation
From the organic fact of existence as a creature
Of flesh and blood, and staying with that matter
In the act of reproduction or self-preservation or destructive work
Of one sort or another for the profit of one person
Only, losing, disabling lives within and beyond the individual.

Therefore in this moment choose: which is your life to be,
Cowardly or brave,
Lazy or industrious,
A labour of hate,
Or a labour of love? all.

Copyright © Charlotte Appleton 2003

Happy Birthday

Time passes, but it does not pass
Away; we are the sum of all that dross
And gold of acts and places come across,
There is only gain, there cannot be a loss,

Nor shall the dead be lost, since time is more forgiving
To them than us; they cannot suffer more
From our degenerate hours, the powers of want
Cannot attack them now reborn, the giving

Of life is constant, even with the living.

Copyright © Charlotte Appleton 2003

After Yeats

For Paul Roche

Immortal to the world's despite,
We burn where there is no more air,
To dance the day and dance the night,
The leaping flames beyond despair,
The star-borne breeze of our delight,
Of victory's hour and vanquished care,
Of love fulfilled, and searing bright
The mind unleashed, the mind of light.

No envious hand may murder here
What years of questing thought have found,
For mortal flesh has much to fear,
The winding-sheet, the burial-ground;
What is consumed by this white heat
Is all of reproduction's woe.
Who fears to tread where angels go
Will freeze and scald, nor reach us yet.

For fire and ice and fevered dreams
And drunk abandonment to song,
And skeins of cabalistic schemes
And passion beyond right or wrong,
Wildfire, maelstrom have flensed us bare,
To naked spirit have we turned,
The void of form upholds us there;
As chalices our bodies here
Are vessels for creation's law.

Copyright © Charlotte Appleton 2003