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Dawn Hogarth-Burton

of

York, England, UK

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Song of the Morrigan

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

The war arrow stuck deep in the wall
And the armies mustered force,
Warriors glinted metal
And the moiling host came forth
O Cu Chulain! The war steeds tramp
Their hooves across every court
And how I fear you will be
Snuffed from existence like a torch
For you spurned my help and I
Am powerless now to aid you.
How it chills me to see the great
Gathering of the black crows.
Now, once begun, the waiting's rent
The acid in my throat gone,
The sun gleams on your shoulder brooch
Like the glittering of a sconce.
I catch my breath at each
Stumble by the flowing river,
Knowing no matter the end here
I will hold you in my heart forever.
How my pulse races on,
How wracked by danger do I feel,
Watching the men of Ulster die,
How they stagger, sway and reel.
Then with the stealth of nightmare
What I feared, I see -
I silver blade stabs upwards.
Your bowels drape your knees
For your time is come
I come also from my peak
I perch upon the blood-dashed brooch
You turn - we're nose to beak.
O Cu Chulain with your spear held tight
To brace you against the boulder
That you may die standing upright
With me upon your shoulder,
See how the Grey of Macha weeps
Hooves spread wide in the bloody mire
And the life-force of the young men
Seeps through the soil in a slimy tide.
All eyes on you, Cu Chulain
Your enemies offer water,
No glory lights their faces,
No pleasure derives from slaughter.
I feel the wind tugging my feathers,
I feel the force within you falter.
The warriors stand expectantly to
See peace in the Hound of Ulster.
The spear drops. I hear it clatter,
I lurch as your body drops
Yet you are half standing still
With your back against the rock.
I spread my wings. The warriors move
Their eyes to me as if to say,
Forgive us men who slay the brave.
I crow once...
Then I fly away.

Storm Crow

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

The swinging of the barley heads
Above their brown and fecund bed
Heralds a mission in the sky
Waving at the fading golden eye
I arch my back
I spread my wings
The ozone in the air stings
My eyes, forces the clouds up high
To team together, block the sun
To threaten the pitiful world of man
The great proud glare's beseiged now
By glowering iron-fisted clouds
That march over the rookery
And taunt me with their mockery
The air now is growing thick
The trees pained like broken sticks
Crouch before the oncoming might
That darkens the day like hot midnight
The first raindrops audible
Ring the rocks like flashing bells
Hail on granite, landscape whitening
Virgin vales raped by lightning
A million, million singing drops
Tear down to Middle Earth and stop,
Asail the seething river, bound
In union to the thunder sounds
How the light stab-stabs and how
My wings detect the time is now
I leave my granite eyrie high
And fly exhalted in Thunor's sky
The steadied rain pelts me
Sable feathers glisten as I
Glide through the heavens
The thunder sounds growl all around
As though at last the storm has found
The purpose of my ecstacy
And realised expectany
Freed, the golden light leaks
Emblazons the darkened peaks
Through the knotted cloud it breaks
In streams like a gilden gate
And as I glide between the girders
It shawls a god-fire round my shoulders
No net can catch me in this space
No arrow find me in my grace
Swirling silent, heart on fire
Mated to this savage ire
For I, I am the feathered friend
Of Ragnarok, the Gods' own end
Swirling high over the fields of gold
Know you, I am Thunor's Storm Crow

Wolfstorm - Hymn to Fenris

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

The clouds knot hands in a darkening sky
Grey and wrath-spiked hackles rise
Great yellow disks wince
Saliva flecks in the howling wind.
The trees bend in unison
Now the Wolfstorm has begun
And rising now in ages' pain
His shoulders ruffle in the lashing rain
He takes in air and grinds it out
In a low blood-chilling howl
Mighty Lord of Wolves, his bane
He shakes, his cursed magic chain
The cord that tethers him to bide
Imprisoned for eternal time.
He heaves at the god-wrought chain
That tightens in his matted mane
Light rakes down the raging clouds
Then comes again the shuddering howl
Of an innocent god in a timeless hold
Seething in the storm, his whole
Strength pitted to snap the line
To reap his destiny, bring his time.
In howling rage he seeks his birth
And then...
To wander on the Earth

Roadside Crow

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

Haematitian valkyrie
Iridescent opal
Sable trousers tugged
By a soft cat's-paw breeze
Alert, a roadside sentinel
Cocking a clever head
Surveying all the living
While seeking out the dead
Past months ago I saw your
Legions on the wing
Many scores, so many flying
High on Western winds
Tight chevrons of darkness
Wave after wave and I
Stood and counted many
As the twilight dimmed the sky
I'd never seen a sight like that
Tell me, where did they go
What draws a sable curtain
An army of black crows?
Tell me, roadside valkyrie
In your husky calls
What mission drew your legions
And what power do you serve?

Boat

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

Down, down we dive too deep
Begging sanctuary from the fickle waves
We held our breath. The charge bit hard
The plane, before, had seen our shape.
My closed eyes see Lorient
The sun on gleaming sea
The pennants on the periscope,
The Admiral on the quay
But here I cannot feel my hands
From gripping, knuckles white
A grating as we come to rest
Sharp fear spears my mind.
Now there's water underfoot
Every brow glistens
We wait for the tell-tale sound
And every ear listens.
I'll never breathe fresh air again
Nor see a sunlit sky
We neither hope nor fool ourselves -
Today's the day we die;
There's a frisson running through the men
Laced with fear, the hush
Expectant in the sparking light...
Then ASDIC gravels round the hull.
Panic rolls the boat length
Like a rotten egg it bursts
Among the crew in a sharp
Tirade of tears and oaths
Now the steady booming comes
Close, so close - I clench my teeth
She cannot take this pressure long.
Rivets burst. The boat leaks.
Escape cannot be contemplated
Cacophanised darkness shrouding
Prematurely as the waters rise
An officer speaking calmly
The lurch as the boat shifts
Pained metal screaming
The last things I know of this world
As the stench of chlorine frees me.

Phantom of a Northern Night

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

You smacked me in the face
In the kitchen doorway
And I stood, two teacups
In my hand, transfixed.

It is 20 years since I saw you
Yet here you wave, pale and silent.
Before you the ash tree throws
Kracken tentacles in the coming storm,
Serpent boughs probe and nose the night

The rain beats the glass but I do not break
My stare - you are too rare to
Turn from,white aurora, revolving your
Upstretched arms in a eurhythmy of the
Ethereal phantom of a Northern night.

Flashback

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

I thought of you this evening
When halted by a sun
Crimson on the skyline, washing
Clouds with seething fury

Your words were in my head
And I could see the waving grass
From my childhood, from the 70's
And I swear I heard your voice

The sun was slipping downward
I could not move. I was locked
By the deathwish in your poem
And the magic of your words.

Wild Witch

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

You scratched years' worth of runes
And by a well you wed him
He folded you in and placed secrets in your heart
Your time is not misty morning
But night, when the pole star
Stares and the cloak of Arrianrhod
Shadows the world of man

You have no pentacle but the earth herself
As is your altar. Your spell completes when the flame
Dies in the death dance of nature

You sing not, except softly and
Your dance can summon unclean things
Time is of no moment to you and
Death a beckoning portal

Where the mousy smell of elder heralds
A phalanx of magpies to
Shatter the stillness and claim your heart
You walk for a while in this world
Resentful, beautiful and brooding
Caring nothing for man,
Nothing

Until close by a crumbling tower
Your spirit returns to its master.

Ehrenfriedhof

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

Beneath a cloudless sky
I examine stones in tufted grass
Between crosses clumped like fungi
Until I find your name, and rest.

Thoughts of you have returned
Year on year, incessant waves
A quiet repeating beat that questioned
But the witnesses are gone, or are lost

They left the forest, slipped behind a fallen wall
Or iron curtain that drew back too late
And though this stone bears your name
You are far from this beautiful place

You are somewhere that surpasses this
Where despair and the thunder of guns
Have ceased and peace surrounds you
Safely in the spiral mantle of time.

Cat Mission

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

"Now! Now! Now!" you scream
And the door swings open
Out you dart in a flurried stream and like
A black-backed bullet you
Click-clack through the cat-flap

In an elegant pause you sniff
The blue night then pounce through the yarrow
And its little ridge-back seeds
Past foxgloves nodding in their sleep
You skirt the ivy, the pale-edged leaves
A-quiver like the wing of a giant
Crouching vulture

You stretch to the message twigs
Mouth half open, eyes half shut
You sniff and stand stock still to summon
Your energy for the Lovecraftian leap
That will fold you into the deepening night.

Grouse Moor

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

We saw the survivors
Standing in the heather
Cocking red surviver eyebrows
They told us to "Go back!"
But we climbed the moor
To the rocky outcrops
Paths watery , half ice
At the top of Simon's Seat
And all the while they watched
From ling, from boulder, from wall
"Go back! Go back!" they called
And laughed under a fret of fog.
But the Seat was silent
Threw its immense cloak around us
Wrapped us in its wet brooding
Shielded all below from sight.
We descended through snow pockets
Sandy, silty meltmud over boot-tops
And through the mist the voices
Of the heroes rose, "Go back!"

Barleyfield

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

There it lay between the
Hawthorne lines, corralled,
A potent power all a-move
A sinuous dancer rippling
On the purer side of wanton
Mesmerising in the spring light,
An orchestrated melee of
Fertility in motion,
A great pale blanket
Of soft strands swaying like
Dancing green sargasso,
Tossing seductive long-haired
Heads in a communal
Susurrating nod,
A sensuous whispering bow
Begging ripeness
From the Sun God.

The Fall

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

In that gestalt horror, the great
Flash and thunder of power, fury and wrath
Did you see your demise, your fall in
That sweeping lurch? And what did you grasp for?
Some renouncing of darkness, a grey
Mitigation as you plummeted as lightning?
Did you grieve for eons for salvation
For Paradise, lost, and what oaths did you swear
Before you cast your eyes on the daughters of Eve?
Dark Heart, was it comfort you sought?
And did you spew your spawn between
Mortal thighs and seal your fate by another sigil
And when earthly mist, like a veil, pulled away
Did you slip from them as soft as a serpent's hiss?
Is there comfort enough in a mortal kiss?
And how will we hide the hybrid race?
Will they walk among men and subtly
Outshine their mortal peers?
Dark Heart, with your symbol cut in the circle
Do you yearn still for return? Is there hope yet
Or has hope grown cold?
Salvation is the only pathway home
Where the symbol is cut deep into the stone
And exile will last till the stone is sand
By your lust you throw in your lot with man.

Dance of Dusk

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

The night wrapped
Grey swaddling around me
There was nothing
Else to hold me
But the breeze
Quickened,
Swept the scent of lilac
In heavy folds, drenching
The night
Spun the candle
Flame, whirled it
On its wick.

I stood alone
And my shadow
Danced.

Storm Arrow

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

I fit an arrow to the notch and feel the ice palms
Of the northern wind cup my wet face
It's kiss a ripping dagger on my lips not
Your fire that I yearned for.
White knuckles in the dusk, in streaming hair
A sudden hum and feathers fly
Into darkness. Now alone
This hunter listens to the wind wail
And jabber to mock my grief.

I can only hang my head and weep.

Relight your fire,dark angel
Touch me, turning back, with your flickering gaze
Can I still wrap you into my very being, body and soul
And make you a knight for eternity?

Half A Lifetime

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

If I touch this dried leaf
Curled and clawed like dead vermin
And run my finger down
It's dessicated spine
That is where that night
Would be; I could fold
My life in half, crease it
Crisply on a misty eve
That folded me into
The longest night of my life.

But I survived
I survived while this leaf died
Rots to a filigree and
Returns to earth
And year after year
Autumn leaves, drift after drift
Yearn for the earth
For peace, to slip into somnolence.

And year after year
Mist after mist
That night is further like a receding shore
Whose treacherous lights wink
Forever to remind me.

Owl

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

She rips the veil of night with her
Rapier stabs, calling he who mutters lowly.
And though I have waited under this heavy
Cloak of sultry air and watched the evil ochre
Of a pupiless sunset wash a sulfurous death throe
Over the horizon, I have seen her only once
She spread silent wings and then was gone
Swallowed into the dark throat of the avenue
Leaving me alone and breathless with only
The thud of apples to pace the Autumn night.

On A Northern Base

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

Someone bowled the thunder moon
It sprang up over the hedgerows
Rolled like a dozy bee, over
Meadows, against a leaden backdrop

Willowherb stood rank upon rank
Speared towards one of those steely skies
That only ever veil an English July
We spoke of Leslie, dead with his WingCo
A lost crew in the Whitley in the tight lips of the sea

The roar of jets ripped the sky apart
Dragged sound like aural ploughs
Grunting flesh inserts in their anti-G suits
Hurtled on a practice mission
Towards the co-ordinates of nothing

And when the silence returned the moon had silvered
Massive and full, beaming over the fields, while
Winking in the backdrop was the
Flickering eye of Mars, poised above
The twitching willows in
A milky drift of stars.

Did You Know Me?

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

I pray you can hear me, little one
Your form stretched out
Dark orbs stare but there
Is a subtle flame in the blinkless
Pools of pupil.

What I would give if I
Could turn back this last week
And live it again holding you.
Nothing prepared me for this,
This aching pain gave no hint of its magnitude
As it lurked in your empty corner
Ready to spring.

I hear you. You are gone but I hear you still
And oh, what I would give to know
That you knew me in those final hours.
Your long claws grasped the vet's hand
But when I bent to hold you, did you
Know that it was me?
Though you lay unblinking your
Ears were pricked. Did you know my voice?
I promised I would return!

I have lain you down where the berries are,
Where the violets will come in the spring,
Your little hide-away where you spent
Many summer hours, watching, sleeping.

I truly believe you did not suffer. It is I
That bear that burden. What I would give
To know I will stroke you again one day and hear
Your tractor-engine purr, feel your claws
Tugging at me as you knead away.
Be happy.
Be at peace in Spirit.
And I pray I will
Hold you again some day.

Timelag

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

The dull ache of dawn does
Not show yet.
The birds are voiceless.
I must wait these hours through,
Sleepless.

Like a team of weary oxen I
Must plod through this
Window of time
Dragging the plough of
Midnight in Los Angeles
Lagging eight hours in the past.

A crisp winter morning will
Usher you into my day
Into this little timespan but
Until the dim light I can
Only wait for you with
Stinging eyes and open arms
And kinship in my heart.

Please Wait

by

Dawn Hogarth-Burton

Hellfire! Sin and Damnation!
This is my fault!
Wait!
Too late!
Why couldn't you have waited?
There is something you do not know.

You have fallen like the thundering night
Pitched into pain and darkness
And how my stomach lurched when
You touched my heart and
I will hold that moment in me forever.

Listen. Do you hear the
Thunder tumble overhead?
Can you hear where you are now?
And what can I do but
Kneel here, too late, to
Stroke your soft hair and your
Beautiful face as you pass from life.
You are cold and still.

Could I have stayed you, had you known?
I would have bent my head down
On your shoulder and sworn an oath to you.

Too late. Do you see yourself
Laid here, where you died in vain
Battling someone else's street fight?
You should have let it go
You should have stayed and
Let me feed my hopes in your
Heart like a priestess.

This floor is cold. If you can
Reach through the veil to me...
Reach even as the sirens wail,
Before the lightning comes again
I will carry your last moment within,
I will seek to make losing you
Count for some worthwhile thing.