At the beach we fall like Carthage
Tasting salt
In the dunes butterflies grace
Small stars on the bramble bush
Bright as copper burning
There is no one here but dreams of wanderers
Worn as sea glass
In twisted nubs that fire never made
Green and agate against your lips
A taste like mermaid skin, you say
I say, as if
For curling winds
We bow our heads
Your face big as the sea-lorn moon
Pocked with hollow frowns
A garland temple on your brow
Pollen on your breath
All fell down
Two mouths make butterflies, of course
Flying away
In utter blue
To wind-torn speechlessness
January is the longest month
After the cacophony
Of the morning’s war
We lost the world in chipped cups
Bird demands and traffic ricochets
Rope burn and gravel skies
Dead teabags high as Babylon
Cigarette ends crushed into the floor
Stations on the map
Of harsh, devoured moments
Crooked and splayed and almost
immediately forgotten
There is no running water
To keep the dead at bay
The crisscross handle bites at your wrist
The throes of something
Desperately still alive
As if you inadvertently held
In a stigmate hand
Knocking at the walls
Lazarus emerging
The day suddenly brazen
Climbing hand on hand
To the second floor
A smudge on your chest
From wounded lath dislodged
When you scraped against the parapet
The surface lunar dry
But beneath, a rich wet earth
That smelt of hungry winter
Tugging at your coat and hair
The building has no face
We are in the socket of its eye
The pages of Salverte’s
Philosophy of Magic
That you translated
In blemishes of ink
Blown on a rising wind
Through the sunrise swelling blindness
For the unfathomed dead to read
We are going on our holidays
Never going back
Through the apocalypse traffic
The vaporous mirage
A dissolving dragon’s breath
Of steeples thin as falling glass
Spilled tropicana cordial
On the strangely serene damask
And leatherette upholstery
The boats all turtle-backed
Marooned above the shingles
Sea birds stalking on the keel
Crusoe desperately waving
From the shadowed underside
Level crossings and cattle grids
Iced-cream coloured songs
Droning on the radio
The static full of summer lightning
Not quite knowing why
We are dressed as cowboys
When we prefer the Indians
Nested in the back seat
Breathing deep the plastic old car smell
Smeared in grins
Tears and sugar
On squalled faces
No, we are not there yet
We have bows, and Colt 45s
Caps and arrows
For passing threats
In Clint Eastwood voices
We are gone
Lost as lariats
On our cowboy holidays
We are never coming back
In my bird garden
I asked a dove
If she mourns lost winter afternoons
The sky furiously balming
Your brow against the glass
Breathing shallow
But, with that reluctant mist
That warns of life in mirrors
Fast evaporating
The bird replied
Though we are
Neither not so cold
Nor defined
by the shape of rain
That we would forego
Our easy days
Still, when the magpie sings
We will find an eave to hide behind
Life is fraught
Bridges far between
The house you build
By tumbling roads
Will fall one day to the bright stars
Of soft, emerging asters
You think a bird a fool, but
How she watches, how she waits
On her flimsy precipice
The magpie is a winter mountain
