Greenwood’s Portcullis comes from The Greenwood Poet, a book that came out today as part of my ongoing romance with doubling my years on odd years and then writing that many poems. I spent a couple of years, off and on, writing about the gothic fantastic and the environment and death, before and after COVID (thought that obviously wasn’t the original intent). I’m going to serialize them on the site for subscribers, of course — 20% will be free and I encourage you to pick up a copy of the hardback.

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Greenwood’s Portcullis

We seem as we come to see, we are
As we’re metaphoring, making our symbols.
Decisions decide seldom our fates,
But seeing is believing and so being,
By training tears how to tunnel to the core
Of our being by certain symbols we make
Convictions and they change vitals on the screen
Till the heart beats heathen drums
Over the dell, arming militias
With parishes and priests, prepping locals
With the Unknown God’s embers in the hearth
Of the nearest inn, newest hut, 
Closest cloister. If our current basic
Images of self undercut the cosmic
In our house and heather, how will we be?
Whom shall I bewilder but me?

For this the thistles and theater of the graves
And barrows beckon: by my street
Stands the last castle of loving Fae. 
The black gates blind us to the true 
Borders of the realm. Bystanders point 
To their midnight walks and the masked coons
Locked inside. Late night guards
Are making the rounds, managing mischief
And thank God for the thick fence
That keeps out the kids. Curious how they miss it…

The Castle of the Fae calls us home.
Hear in the heart of harrowing stone 
And bone and steel and brazen calves
With the moneyed masses of maybe five
Percent of the city sure in their millions.
The White Horse wonders at the fall from
Across the pond’s chasm and hopes:

Greenwood gapes, its grapes await
The press to empty, to pass away
The age of ink, aching to fill 
Her with grapes again. If you get here early 
And hold still, you’ll hear Fae come 
When the traffic stills, trains hush and
Planes quiet: on the prickle of hawthorn,
In the splash of the fountain, displayed in blades
Of greenwood grass: greet the tiniest armies 
Of the hoards of heaven hiding though tall, 
Diminished though mighty, demeaned to use
Superstition as their safety net
And the black gates to blind the masses.
They hide in here. Hear them whisper:

“Oh family in Forbes, oh friends in canyons, 
Oh the Amazon eaters: we’re eager to see
Mankind surrender their many screens
And see again, seem the image,
Become the metaphor that’s calling their being.”

We are as we come to clearly see.
And we see seldom the sylphs in the trees
Twittering and singing the truth of the boughs
We think we protect with thistle and cage 
And the black gates that bind graves.

But it’s the outer edge of unearthly kingdoms
We may never meet or know
Because of phones. Because of bad sight.
Because the light has been carried from our eyes
Into artificial asteroids and stars
In our personal box, private Pandoras
By the millions while Mind diminishes in The West.

We are what we come to clearly see.
Image emerges at the end of our hearts,
We become that and claim no more.
But the black gate hides a buried Welcome
Mat under the ivy if you search.
Seek and find. Sing and hear.