I dipped into the past today
and sailed a piece of it away
Salt is sweet and the sea is free
and locked by land the same as me
Every child out having fun
can hold a candle to the sun
Light breathes in, days pull up shorter
herons ink their plot of water
Sometimes it’s the stove, sometimes the storm
confirms my heart is home and warm
If they kept being true, the things we meant
we’d be thin soup, puddle-dull, stagnant
They lie through their eyes, their tongues, their teeth
who cannot stomach what lies beneath
Dawn and dusk knit day and night
into a cape of salmon light
Before it collapses into foam
a wave is an emperor on a jade throne
You add me up to what I am
and what we are, venn diagrammed
One and two, and two and three
and so on for eternity
There is none so deaf and blind
as he or she the song can’t find
I stopped the draught and deja vu
it found another crack to come through
When I try with all my might to care
it doesn’t get me anywhere
Well make me up and drag me down
a hero tumbles like a clown
I want to know how a flower knows
it’s time to open and time to close
Enlightenment is for the larks
Spiders work their web in the dark
Mayhem and metamorphosis
is what the old gods promised us
Intimate distance grows at the sign
for Windwhistle Farm and mulled wine
The rocks in my head are tumbling to
the solar system’s anti-clockwise view
A crow caught in the string of a kite
has only one fighter in the fight
Consider the little that you know
then plump for where the snowmen go
Pecking at grain in a frozen bowl
a winter sparrow resolves my soul
Living at the edge of one’s self
is better than living on the shelf
The reed beds on the levels sigh
when starlings murmurate the sky
He took my hand and opened my yes
into stars and quietness
Nothing special happened when
nothing special happened again
Why are the mice not springing the trap
why is the road all over the map
A wink, a hat-tip or a nod
is all you need to give a god
Part of the pleasure lies in how
the time I dragged is flying now
Between the weather-vane and the ark
a dove will die, a day go dark
Here is the line I lay my heart in
the end of the road is the start of the garden