Child

         

Where are you.

Where are you child.

Among the spring green leaves

Naked as a lizard;

I hear your airy lilt,

Why are you humming.

From what remote well

Do these grotesque sounds come;

Dispatched, bleak cirrus

In the high skies of a child's voice,

Freezing all the forest

Into fairy-tale stillness.

Where are you,

Where are you child.

In what empty paradise;

Where's the tower that emits your eccentric song;

Against the frozen wings of which birds of paradise

Do you rub.

The way of the world

I came across a written piece in which it said that you can be very friendly with a person. The friendliness grows towards a sexual relationship.  A time comes when that  relationship might be consumated, but if the moment passes, the relationship  unravels, even appears somewhat sordid to the other person. 

It always surprises me when I see the closest relationships break up, only to descend into a version of open warfare.

You see it, often in families: is it because there's a sense of betrayal? Closeness turns to outright hostility.

The Way of It

I can't fit you into my scheme of things  

nor you me,

now that we've finally become ourselves.

I turn on you sharper than a scalpel,

spit words chiselled to wound.

Out from beneath the quilt of affection,

our naked selves so vicious,

we bruise each other with the same fervour

that once marked our love.

She Swept into the Sky

That day Maggie Allen,

propped up in her bed,

was staring at the bedspread.

Snow, melting in her eyes,

fell, tiny bells,

into the valley far below.

Suddenly, arms spread wide,

a blizzard of hair,

she swept outward

off her ledge,

into the sky

across the room.

We stared at her

nonplussed face,

the four pillows tucked behind her.

Reflection

The sunlight on the back of your neck,

ear-lobes, hair.

A page-reflected glow onto your chin,

dimming upward towards your eyes,

and all else darkness around you.

If I’d never seen that you are beautiful;

that day, as the light chose to steal up behind you,

to settle on you  so gently, but dazzlingly;

that light would have been light enough

to reflect forever in my mind.

Lost in Adulthood

Explorers

Poem for Elaine

Then, I was the explorer

with that pedal happiness in my feet;

down a tunnel of laurels

or wellington-deep in water.

Now I have to be reminded:

there are furze trails to be charted,

tracking to be done in the tall grass,

and we should be deadly quiet

in the hedge caverns after dark.