words & pictures
Caught a blue day On a sharp paper wing Thin throat a-howl Until the looped string Broke with that strange Updrawing weight Of a new jealous wind’s Stray trumpeting Gone almost too high Almost to glass Almost as thin As the last shard In your blue orb’s Sun struck glance No longer you No longer me No longer see Gone paper thin A scrabble of ink Through translucent skin
It seems so slight a thing that you waved and smiled as if departure were less finale more seaside pantomime you a painted backdrop exeunt all except the windscreen glass obtuse and thick as a dead cathode tv the angular distortion smalling in that rough, jabbed elbow way of laughing sundrowned rivers bent and glistering as the fading edges of a dream don’t you wish you were never born you said then you could stay, then you could stay all that blood and living costs too much no deal you can make the road dust licking at tightrope martyred wrists in devils as the wheels groan turning on the sand a sound like the sea, and you in this dry rememberance not yet done with drowning
Rain birds chisel A heaving silvered sky I think how The polish smears reflections Until just the wake of it remains In lines as thin as chemtrails The weather will one day end, you said With that delphic nonchalance Of blue emerging from occluded winter An eggshell’s upturned mask Exaggerated so The sentiment is more easily read Across the vast arena of your thrall I wonder if the grass Remembers where you fell Sways the shape you left In evening’s bristled yellow We have a house of melodies Not regrets, holed like the lace Of blowsy curtains, a shadow’s Brief forgetting on your skin The fabric, thistle dry When it gentling scrapes Against your brow, and lips and chin A genuflection, anathema On your eyes, another Involuntary blink Through dust in sunlight’s sheaves Almost the start of weeping –except Gathered around the street (The drone almost tired) scattered flowers make A library for bees, the honeyed Aftermath of thoughts Dolloped with the burnt wing fragrance Of returning spring
The rain harangues Curtails the rags of afternoon To a kind of twilit comfort Of these few close held rooms You are in my sleeve Sate as other Sunday evenings Hesitant as a bird Crumpled as if you were already thrown away Like the stone the tailor threw A knit as camouflaging As any grass-thin shadows Your voice, close enough For doves to misconstrue Still, against the staccato dark Of shades rigged tight as seabird sails In any failing storm I don’t understand How suddenly you flew
In the fields, the foxes watch with yellow eyes Autumn brings you back in the ache of burning leaves I brought whispers for your skin and daisies for your hair In knotted threads and twined, without end or crown or throne But this bed of cautious roses and dully gleaming stones In the fields the foxes watch with yellow eyes Can I hold you for a moment in a mask of sepia? Before it falls from my hand to a soughing wind I brought whispers for your skin, and daisies for your hair I think, perhaps, you were never really here But hear again your soft-caught vixen cry In the fields, the foxes watch with yellow eyes How they approached, with equal parts temerity and care To tremble at your outstretched hand I brought whispers for your skin, and daisies for your hair So strange, that they have come Here again to say goodbye In the fields, the foxes watch with yellow eyes I brought whispers for your skin, and a crown of daisies For your hair
Clothes are all wrong Cut a thistle from my hair Fed it to the morning fire Took a ripple from a pond In your hands it came alive Startled, let it slip In that starry colour, fled
Pull at the reins of sleep you curve away caparisoned horses jangling with a head thrown preen motes and stars pinwheeling I thought I had you the circus brightness of your smile the acrobats of laughter But, a rain dull echoing of shod iron feet On the roof a mocking skeleton dancing It is hard to know if redoubts are weak as second thoughts The shapes you left in sawdust now uncertain
