THE COLD

 

It has come like a tale

whispered in

draughts' dreams

and chinks crashed

with air and stare,

the wind whooshing

all the way in.

The square is stark.

The space clean.

The land vast.

I, a sledge in the mind

and an ark in the heart,

freeze and slide.

NOVEMBER 2nd, BIRDS AT DAWN

 

Dark and low clouds outside

and the shuffling of leaves on leaves,

from the oak, rusty hue, dusty orange.

I’m in bed, shutters closed,

I am awake, I know it’s early

and I lie in the wake of my having been

early for ages, waiting for whatever

bides its time.

Dark and still, I sense the low clouds

in the absence of wind.

The countryside and its stare,

the scattering and gazing of here into there,

maybe I began as a digressing child

giving a face to the countryside,

eyes breathing, seeping into skin,

earth in its damp progressing within

and eyes crediting marvels, unseen,

loving the familiar unknown, within.

Now I am hearing a sound that’s almost a sting,

but it’s soon clear it is a close chirping

like tatted lace in the shutter

indulging in the fabric of its own matter.

The dark filling with fingers of light,

the chirping like an audible smile,

even now, on the year’s decline:

I can’t but believe in what begins.

MATTER

 

The stick your dog picks up on the street

looking back at you while walking,

eyes warm, alert and amused,

in his mouth a trophy to expose,

a clean, honed prey to carry about,

you would never have seen it,

and once he drops it another comes up

instantaneously, you never see him

picking it up and there is no

magician’s trick, just the quick walking,

this new one is even more honed

and white, like marble, and sharp,

a blade the moon has polished

together with the teeth now brandishing it,

it must have been so alluring and near,

it’s now what the skin of the soul reveals

piercing each second with what really is.