Kingfisher

Whose is the hand that I will hold?

Whose is the face I will see?

Whose is the name that I will call

When I am called to meet thee?

In this life who did you love

Beneath the drifting ashes?

Beneath the sheeting banks of air

That barrenly bore our rations?

When I could speak it was too late

Didn't you hear me calling?

Didn't you see my heart leap like

A pup in the constant barley?

In this new life where did you crouch

When the sky had set to boiling?

Burnin' within; seen from without

And your gut was a serpent coiling

And for the sake of that pit o' snakes

For whom did you allay your shyness?

And spend all your mercy and madness and grace

In a day beneath the bending cypress?

It was not on principle

Show, pro-heart, that you have got gall

A miracle!

I can bear a lot but not that pall

I can bear a lot but not that pall

Kingfisher, sound the alarm

Say, "sweet little darlin', now, come to my arms

Tell me all about the love you left on the farm"

He was a kind, unhurried man

With a heavy lip and a steady hand

But he loved me just like a little child,

A little child loves a little lamb

Thrown to the ground by something down there

Bitten by the bad air while the clouds tick

Trying to read all the signs

Preparing for when the bombs hit

Hung from the underbelly of the earth

While the stars skid away below

Gormless and brakeless, gravel-loose

Falling silent as gavels in the snow

I lay back and spit in my chaw

Wrapped in the long arm of the law

Who has seen it all

I can bear a lot but not that pall

I can bear a lot but not that pall

Kingfisher, cast your fly

O lord, it happens without even tryin'

When I sling a low look from my shuttering eye

Blows rain upon the one you loved

And though you were only sparring

There's blood on the eye, unlace the glove

Say, honey, I am not sorry

Stand here and name the one you loved

Beneath the drifting ashes

And in naming, rise above time

As it, flashing, passes

We came by the boatload

And were immobilised

Worshiping volcanoes

Charting the loping skies

The tides of the earth left

Us bound and calcified and made as

Ostinate as obsidian

Unmoving, save our eyes

Just mooning and blinking

From faces marked with coal

Ash cooling and shrinking

Cracks loud as thunder rollin', I swear

I know you; you know me

Where have we met before, tell me true?

To whose authority

Do you consign your soul?

I had a dream you came to me

Sayin', you shall not do me harm anymore

And with your knife you evicted my life

From its little lighthouse on the seashore

And I saw that my blood had no bounds

Spreading in a circle like an atom bomb

Soaking and felling everything in it's path

And welling in my heart like a birdbath

It is too short, the day we are born

We commence with our dying

Trying to serve with the heart of a child

Kingfisher lie with the lion