Watch While All The Leaves Festoon Poem by Mark Heathcote

Let us not be drowned in wailing sirens
While you work in your domesticity
Let us deliberate quiet silence
Let us deliberate simplicity
And cross a bridge that leads to another.
That expands your soul from its pit of sin
Now let us greet as sisters and brothers.
As Leonard Cohen plays the mandolin
And the mountain heather is laced with gold
Reflected in a lake, a silver spoon

Zen Buddhists watched beneath the manifold
Stars and moon, watch while all the leaves festoon.
Intricate paths that wander in recess
Reflected in a sea that wears no clothes
A hake fish we ate from a sequined dress
Once hooked all of us made love swearing oaths.
With a heart like a sinking, galleon
Let lizards lose a tail and grow a soul
Remember, remember there's halcyon
-Day's still to come and openly cajole

Like a pearl from its closed blue oyster shell
Let the snake wear a new suit of clothes
Let Leonard Cohen songs warn us of hell
Awaken us to love the throes of trolls
And sing of desperation and danger
Jig-like corpses in a sky burial
As windblown kale, infants in a manger
Happy as before that malarial
-Encounter that left them half-stoned or dead
As lovage wilted in monasteries

We the deceased pray behind walls mislead
Wake; find there are no more fairies
Or sad beasts or sirens with their sea drums
Just, Leonard Cohen his melodic lulls
With a thousand kisses deep in tones
Dulcet, dark, full of life and suffering
Going a thousand fathoms deep he moans
I'm a gloomy brother recovering
I hold roses, not lilies closing time
Melting hold-in-me a snow-child sublime.