portents

i dreamed i saw us among the wooded grove
forming then fading as thin as chance conjunctions
while familiar with concealed observance
insubstantial ghosts foaming like drifting clouds of insects
were prevailing over our arrival
obstructed by the malevolence of demons
we did not sense nor suspect
those random particles as evil forms
among the glorious limber leaf and bark

in league with enchantment we
consult together on the trivial miracles
of herbs and weather and unity
with a gentility whose magic still abides my casual memory
but now through the great scope of hindsight
i sense its ghoulish hearers railed against this loves projections
disgusted by its impudence
and its flouting of those moral natural laws

so the furies whirled dervish like from the secret wooded place
and in a giant turbulence round the copse they vented anger
ripping complicit branch and innocent sapling both
then swept off across the green and wedded hills
their coagulated hatred, as irritated gods will, shreds the ether
whose darkness to the very corners of the earth
in biting storms rose, swirling, obliterating skies
with its sombre electric loaded vortex

portents which i ignored
portents which once alight
raged like fires through once green and wedded hills
till those hills were bleak and blanched
and only bracken grew among the burnt out
stumps of yesterday