Filigree of trace lines
nerve endings, optic fibres;
visions absorbed and re- absorbed
inverted commas, colons: semi -quavers
pink suns spinning in motionless heaven
sign behind the line that you have understood.

Invalid projections bounce from fine encounters
the witness takes a breath,
you hold out your hands again and again
offering love in thin disguises
serendipity formed from glass towers
trusting in the synapses,
figurines defying their cracked shelter.

Outside noise interjects…..
if you had known better you could have
caught the jet between us
turned it into gold for children’s entertainment.

Buffeting like trees
leaves snap shoulders
body screams from faded brake pads
lose of impulsion on early autumn days
Virgoan light humming straight-jacket of disorder,
I can see forever in the tree line, perspective dark as cancer
which no shame will dislodge.

We are true to our restrictions,
I enact your infidelities, you are loyal
like a well loved undergarment hugging my contours
clinging in an umbilicus of insistence
listening to the blood call; with it’s sugar, with it’s salt.

Life rides me again and again
demanding a clear pathway,
you coming later understood better
have caught sooner, the thread we’ve yet to own.

I have denied the notion,
denied three times
the possibility of a version
borne my thorns with masochistic pride
set you free to prophecy

to the unknown.

Night is limitless
sleep stutters moon flutters
through shifty cloud :
& dawn rises heavy with the cry of birds
flocks of gulls, harsh raucous
unforgiving.

Sleep drains through
handkerchief of memories
jumbled maybes: I ask you
how you’ve been, but only
silence answers.

Old worries surface
these restless nights
things I should have done
places we used to meet lie
abandoned.

Yes we’re changed,
hung from branches of memory tree:
you lie alone, as you must have been
while I lived my life young and free
only now I truly feel;
the salt tart madness of your tears

as you waited for me.

Your fingers comb the light
stretch it out to silken thread
a halo for my bended head
I watch through life worn eyes
map the traces of your tears
those laughter lines from years
before we met.

As fragile as the dawn
as strong as sinews
ripped from lion’s jaw:
you’re reaching out for love
with honesty I can’t forgive,
we dance around the pivot where
we often meet

& all my yesterday’s come tumbling in
to mock me now, how did we know
that moment that we met
before the kiss, & all of this
that love is possible once more,
that hearts may allow one by one
a shining.

My heart is a darkroom
you pass through it
black and white images
I cut you into size
and paste a collage.

My dreams are of flying over rivers, Missouri rivers deep green flecked with tangled weeds, I stare into the water and see nothing. You are the other side of me you leave me calm and healed.

I become a seed
blown by an unseen wind.

I turn to you and listen to the riddle, only the waves make no noise as they slap the flat shingle, passers by stare at us;

we whittle the air
into spirals of incense.

Burning wind on my skin, take a brush to brush you with, you a fawn covered in dark downed hair.

The voice is the carrier of the soul
all those stars branded across Milky way.

How many heavens can we see tonight?

Light’s luminous today
it seems to hang above the sea
like a courting curtain of pure joy.
I wake to certainty of hail
anything to take the phantoms
of the night, squeeze them
from my dreams.

Children ask impossible advice.
Do if I know where ‘soul’ resides?
Perhaps in flight of solitary kite,
or hidden in a baby’s smile;
the love that lit your eyes and mine
before time erased the memory.
Yes it resides in all of these.

& endless murmur of the sea;
that calls to me.

Powdered stillness
falls crystal longings

horses stamp white ground
deer startle from edge of copse

dog ignores digging beneath
for fool’s truffle

at the end of the street
children roll snow

as I wait for your thaw.

Back and forward
like a duel edged sword
the small boy travels
making sense
of his cut clean world.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..
Circles climb to spirals, here we meet face to face, the room is glowing from Californian water colours, Indian tapestries, lovers drawings, the table neatly pegged with manuscripts. Your dead wife sits below the mantelpiece her self-portrait radiating the blonde crowned face of the angel she was to you. Writer , painter, two by two you stalked the confines of a world too small to bare you both, both bare in your coming together creating a new world which reverberates now with your small blonde grandson, stirring and re-stirring the embers. We always talked of many things; maybe I fell in love with you, the father and married the son, maybe there was always hope of what he might become. The thread runs deep between us to the earth’s core, you are frail, fragile, lame with time’s harsh paring down of bone upon bone, the marrow in your bones has turned against you. You’re brave and brilliant with your stories, bright as the unknown cluster in an unseen sky, we ponder the meaning of light, can only find an answer in reflection, talk about the untellable, sealing wax on contracts non decipherable in the darkness of time. You’ve become a warm presence in a room created by and from love and we hold carefully the things that divide us.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Small boy climbs the stair
unaware of stately generations
deviations, he will find
in picture postcards of the past
signed with his name.