When the snow is going,
time is melting;
think deforming clocks.
Spoons stretching their necks
into slime thin slimness
craning downwards,
examining where to
drop
with silver spherical absorption
and cup hooks
with feelings, straining
to hold onto water.
When words fail,
sing;
magnet
for all those filings,
splintered thoughts;
sing the lasso
of a familiar song,
draw in those fond memories
together.
In memory of my mother
What to say, what words to pick;
words so freely scattered, now
that she was breathing fitfully, within
minutes of leaving her life,
leaving those she loved for the love
she had prayed all her days,
and these words, if she could hear,
the last words she would ever hear.
How we struggled to find a way of saying
we love you, be happy to be journeying,
approaching the God of her life-long devotion.
How to put love, comfort, encouragement
into uncertain, dismayed voices;
to put words that were special from us to her.
Her breathing weaker now, and our voices
hopefully reaching through the fog in her head;
our voices the last sounds before her space-travel.
What words to send with her, if they could be heard;
our company to the threshold, and beyond;
warmth to carry into the unknown.
Spears of mountain grass bronze tipped
and edged, grading to gold, to green;
tufts splayed like ceremonial headdresses,
gleaming in the already golden sunlight,
resplendent.
Bowled over by the glories I’d missed,
with narrower eye, I see patches of azure sky
along the track, yellow-green grasses combed
smooth by rushing flood water in culverts,
silver-glinting mica in the siding rocks,
magnificent.
Beneath the mountains, the rain-reflected gleam
of low sun into my eyes is a celebration
of the bejewelled growth along the wayside,
the play of light, water and mountain breezes
dizzying, fire-working my senses into exhilaration,
and profound joy.
Love found us sleeping with multiples
of ourselves
as we divined
all of us that we are, strove towards
all we could be,
and, imagining the best we could never be,
endeavoured to be those too.
What I didn’t expect:
it all blurs.
What a rare ol’ time it was:
blurred;
what closeness:
blurred;
what excitement:
blurred.
How tight we were;
what nights we had;
what we wouldn’t have done;
what we wouldn’t have done for each other;
it blurs;
all of it blurs.
Deforestation:
another cancer-ridden lung,
its blackening tissue,
from the air,
ugly as any tumour,
as aggressive a cancer
as would cause any patient
to stop.
Tiger rests, tongue slakes flames,
zen-like in shadow patch
beneath over-arching fronds;
when earshot goes click,
eyesight opens in coin flick,
Tiger, sunlight in leaves,
silent on padded paws
muscle tide carpeted,
sense, action, being, crouched
in cave opening of eyes;
springs sheltered beneath fangs
gush bright silver streams,
Tiger turns dreamy.
imagine
the dim muddy sunlight that filters into lake water
imagine
those perfectly round, olive green leaves drifting by
trailing their spiralis stems behind them
imagine
bubbles here and there rising like nascent stars innately
aware of the presence of sky
imagine
in that place, a man drifts by, a ripple of life with a vague light
from half open eyes
imagine
his love similarly, lying on his back as they flow, her eyelids
heavy like his
imagine
the depth’s silence caressing their bodies with luxurious density
imagine
their eyes see you as they pass, but regard you as incidental as
any sight along their way
imagine
that oneness, close your eyes and think of it
Two wooden posts, maybe five metres apart,
driven into the ground near the edge of a moor,
a desolate, wild expanse;
the connecting fence long since gone.
Two estranged lovers
standing at the edge of each others’ company,
maintaining their rigid positions
in vast pointlessness.
How magical it all was:
all of us gathered in the sitting-room,
watching every moment of the setting up
of screen and projector, the reels fitted
into place, lights turned off, then click
and whirr and our own cinema,
the impossible happening before our eyes.
Now, cine-camera, projector and screen,
most likely broken, taking up space in our attic;
a few reels of film tossed in a box, unseen
by anyone for many years.
And those faces, blurred behind grainy footage
and jumpy camera-work: dead, long dead
most of them; before our children’s memories.
Ah, old magic, even I won’t risk seeing them again.
Misplaced and crass,
worn like plate armour
by a man who'll pass
completely,
almost as quickly
as his breath on glass.
Between the leaves of a book, I find half a greeting card;
the picture, not the message.
The book has been a long time untouched,
but the card has stirred something; I cannot remember;
was it put there to remember?
The years pass, the books collect on the shelves,
here and there marked with tokens from our lived lives;
moments we once considered worth marking,
now lost among the abandoned books,
the millions pages past.
Blue,
bright night blue,
painted evenly across the sky.
A moon’s yellow halo low above the dunes,
smooth undulating dunes,
or lovers, perhaps:
smooth curved backs of lovers
in a lamp’s yellow halo,
and the slow shift of sand grains
along night’s gentle breezes
or the slow drift of lovers
along their gentle breathing.
The photograph on the wall has turned blue;
I can’t remember the original colours,
and the image is turning into fog.
I’d forgotten what year you died;
a few years ago, I assumed,
then I was told it was fifteen.
A person dies; you thrash around in the memories;
finally a day arrives and you’re not remembering,
then more days pile in.
My memory of you is turning blue;
I have forgotten the original colours,
and you are turning into fog.
