Her Hair

 

Her hair

fell, long entwined tresses

down the length of her back,

down past her knees.

Sunlight nested there,

in those long ivy trails;

small birds must surely have flown

garlands about her head?

But today it was patterns

of run-off water on the strand;

the way the past is preserved;

still beautiful, if stone.

 

All of it,

all our care,

all our passion,

will become, soon enough,

just beautiful smoke.

No Name

 

cross the bridge

of your childhood

rolling it up

as you go

keep it

over your shoulder

ask for directions

to the desert

you’ll have arrived

when you are nowhere

unroll the rucksack

set up home

White Page

 

White is infinite:

infinite symmetries,

infinite perfections.

Intimidating therefore:

imperfection on white

is unforgivable.

Nightie Night

 

I turned on my side, shadows moved between the wardrobe

and the ceiling, and over in the corner near the door. I closed

my eyes. Main Street was in the pours, its shops streaming down

the car windows, neon flashes, on and off, our faces dim

as 30watt bulbs, on off, on off, the car a prison of rain drumming

bad temper into our ears, and shapes of people fleeing both sides

of the street, like we too should be getting away, moving somewhere.

I opened my eyes to see Jesus in the wallpaper and closed my eyes

as quickly not to see Him, behind my eyelids a legion of angels

descended in iodine-coloured light from where coal-black clouds

had opened Heaven onto the earth. Open again, the lights of a car

travelled across the room, and left it blacker; where, I wondered,

                     can cars go in the pitch black night?

A World

 

Gods; we make all that is in the world

beautiful when we are lovers.

In our sunlight all that was ordinary

is now spectacular, part of our happiness,

gathered around us, by us, to fulfill our

knowing of each other. All that is mundane,

the daily effects and events shine

with the gleam we see in each other;

all we live within heightened to exhilaration.

Love sees its perfection where it lives,

celebrates its belonging, and is complete.

Surprise, Mam

 

If the stars fell

like snow

so all around

was a glow of lights

streaming

down our eyes,

making a surprise

of happiness,

I’d remember you,

between two lines

of July-dancing

sheets,

pegs in your teeth,

fast clouds in your hair;

ah, to be there

again

making a surprise

of happiness.

Leaving

 

I wonder how it is taking leave of your loved ones that last time,

or  watching the daffodils fade knowing it ito be your last season,

or hearing the words ‘rest now, breathing is too difficult’, knowing

those on the shore are letting the mooring line slip into the water.

Water

 

Water

Water held my face;

the wind tried to steal it.

A fish jumped,

I had a brainwave:

why don’t you and I

make our home in the water?

First Days Away

 

Those first days away from home,

in a city with nowhere to go, knowing no one,

and no one to expect you at any place, any time

created an almost dizzying disconnectedness,

an unsettling emptiness; perhaps it felt like a lobotomy.

Alcohol was an easy decision: a place to hang out,

a reason to be there; alcohol would fill the hours,

dispel the loneliness. The hubbub of a bar was a vision of living;

though one was alone,  a rock in a stream, for a while it felt like living,

and later, when the isolation began to drill your brain,

the alcohol would take you away, tuck you up in oblivion.

Crow Speak

 

A crow, high up on the wires,

a knot of night-time

grumbling this last fifteen minutes;

gabbling inside his feathers

obscenity-filled arguments;

a vituperative stream.

Fagots of words issuing fluently,

from the throat behind his horny beak,

a language long hidden beneath the cloak

of feather and pitch;

a communication with the sky

as present and natural as weather.

Burren

 

Burren

The hard skin, we walked,

to the clouds,

and from the clouds to the sea,

and out to the lighthouse.

A country with no boundaries

between land and water,

nor land and sky,

nor past, nor future.

God lives in a cave,

God lives on the mountain,

God and the devil

living among others of their own kind.

We walked the pavements,

among living shadows;

they held out their hands;

their hands sang.

We saw, in water-filled hollows,

ourselves: air, rock and light,

transient and eternal;

cloudscapes, not people.

Midget Man

 

I give you midget man:

the mite with purpose.

I give you the inexplicable

workings of a miniaturised brain;

the repetitious trawl of a mind

across one, same, vacant square.

I pass onto you the question:

what possible purposes

can a zig-zagging corpuscle of life

have:

the conundrum of protoplasm,

slime, albeit contained,

having somewhere to go?

September Swallows

 

Knots on wires uncurling:

crochets escaping staves,

commas punctuation.

September swallows,

avionics engaged,

suddenly frenzied

as though their true selves,

too long furled,

must hone their aeronautics:

wheel, swoop, sweep;

for tomorrow

they will trace lines of longitude.

Grief

 

Along the edge of your grieving

is the wind’s voice,

that snags and flitters on the sloe;

blooming rags that flicker

through the hollows of your nights,

rummaging through your memories.

And, when the scouring is done,

dawn’s eye, dry as weathered bone,

will come, find you, nail you to its eternity.