Failing Light

In the failing light of a November evening,

kicking through the rotting leaves on a suburban path,

I remember you, digging the garden ridges, shaking out

the groundsel, tossing the stones under the hedge.

Great events in your kingdom were scurryings in the grass,

a thrush feeding on a worm, raindrops falling from the apple trees.

Far from inspectors and reports, you held sway over

the straightening of ridges, regiments of onions and lettuces.

With each passing year, you are buried deeper beneath memory,

becoming ever more intangible, like these rotting leaves

that leave only their scent hanging in the dank November air;

after all this time, you have become more like a film I once saw.

Fail

My voice into the nowhere

Tailed off;

It almost reversed.

I looked there;

my nerve failed,

so I left.

That darkness

Hangs tauntingly over me;

It is my failure.

The Broken Bells of St Mary's

Saint Mary's church, Lubeck, Palm Sunday 1942.

The bells of the Marienkirche, still lying where they fell

Filled with air,

the bells floated

down;

like dandelion seeds,

sycamore seeds;

like thistle.

Like the bells,

the bombs fell

down;

like dandelion seeds,

sycamore,

thistle.

And soon enough 

all was quiet:

bombs,  bells,

 kirk;
and so too, I assume
the trumpets in Heaven.

.

The River Took Me

Once, in a sodden, flaggered field

beside the river,

the current took me;

not a canoe but a trout,

a water’s flint smoothed by its flow,

a ripple’s almond.

All sleekness and fluidity,

all instinct;

a lidless eye running,

seeing and discarding,

gorged on movement,

passing all argument.

Goddess of Winter, Cailleach

I am weave,

flows bare bones of the land,

roots blood my stealth;

streams mountain hair,

hillsides’ ruminations,

meadow fantasies;

bleaches sunlight,

sugars earth,

rips the seas’ tides;

calls clockwork from branches,

buries bones in soil, drags days behind,

stirs the year.

Her Leaving

Film strip, a train’s windows.

Outside mine,

parents are straining for a last glimpse.

Embarrassed, she stares ahead.

The train moves, windows pass.

Outside the next,

mother is easing the glasses down her nose

to remove a tear.

At the next, husband’s arms around her,

and words, words, invisible words.

The train now gone from the platform,

a tail, a film strip flapping free.

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,
choose words shaped to torture.

Out from beneath the quilt of affection,
we, our naked selves so vicious,

bruise ourselves with the same fervour
that once marked our loving.

Coping, Not Coping

You screamed; no one heard.
You wondered if you had screamed at all.

I asked you where the lines on your face came from;
another line appeared.

Now, because your eyes are perpetually electrocuted,
I talk on and on;

always taking the precaution of being somewhere else
before I stop.