granulates
the attrition
the fine dust of loss
along the window ledges
that are my eyes
what if looking out
enough through them
would make them hollow
and cause collapse?
the dry eye of the weary
the salt eye of the lost
capitulating
in rain that air turned liquid
that falling wet of relief
how it moves
and downward
washing wishes
to their threadbare vanishing
because looking through
you become blind
and blinded by that crust of
fear that was the wearing down of time.
The river has a hollow in it
where you would have fitted
four footed leap plunge
the spring of you
the coil of that pulsing good-will body
full of joy’s vibrations
intent on the moment
as if every passing one was a smell too rich
not to contemplate
the airborne seconds
the water’s thick arms all over your fur
and how you threw it back
off your coat when it let you go.
Sometimes you shadow me
are so close – those times we nosed
one after the other
over the sand sky water
the sweep of your tail an extension of my arm
you a blur in my eyeline
a flash of brightness shimmering
or sleeping all purry soft
the grass smell of your paw pads
the easy heave of your breath.
Sniffs its way to the low point rockfall
sleek and tingling black with silver highlights
thread and scent and earthturn, log tossing, bending, fishtug
fills the day with rush the night with runnels
finds the interesting depth and stays there
mulling, turning, breeding
insisting on life and nurturing the algae the dragonfly pupa
washing the rocks until they ripple themselves
becoming and becoming.
The staccato spark
light worms the darkness
stripes of fire-drops
cascade of gold dribbles
matching the sunset.
The eye does duplicate
two for the sweep of one
the air filters and stings of smoke
peppers with glitter
the combustion of tree crusts.
We whoop to the night
with our glowing sticks
black and torching
making twirls and spirals
on the retina of the sky.
I would take all your injuries
and put them on my body.
The swell of blood up and out
would be my own.
The way it falls tearing out of you
to swallow in me and become
that magic river of pain and painless
that granted thing that once spilled
congeals and stains a dangerous red.
When you were born your whole skin held you
so complete yourself so fine and finished
the skin of your heel that spread to shape your eye.
I, breathless with wonder at what had fallen out of me ,
found falling the clasping point; the broken thing was me.
Made of blood and so brimming with it
that I could weep and weep and not lose you,
and you go and damage yourself against
this ramshackle world never to lose me.
‘If someone’s skin was made
of infra-red would we be able to see them?’
My answer grapple
is disabled by your quick
thinking flick mind
making new glint eyed views
about all that’s new in the world
and ancient things that
swam the seas and
saw toothed their way
through water as thick with
prey as my airspace is with your
questions.
The hook and sinker of it all:
the spin of the reel:
the way the sun throws
light across the world
to catch your eye.
Eyes to lens
he looks
from the photo
seeming to look
all the way along time.
Sees his own death
filtered there
in the moon
of the photographer’s
box, the hooded man
crouching in
the dark of the future.
At once his eyes are
alive with love;
all those possibilities
that open and close
so many valves,
he feels his heart
battering there
the small pansy
she picked him
cooling in his
buttonhole.
He is as sad
to seem pleased
as he stares ahead
remembering some
small pleasure
like choosing the
dapper tie
and his daughter’s fine hands
straightening his stiff collar.
I came to hate that clock
its stiff hands chronicled grief
and all its ticking days
held steady up the time
each one of you died.
I dream of that house
the wax flowers on the door step
the rows of bricks that
were the formal entrance
on the shady side.
I dream you have installed
an impossible aquarium
where huge faceless fish
idle in the clarity and swim
their speckled bodies against the glass.
The solid gold of the inner workings
don’t hold back all this changing
from metronome to monotone
that dark peculiar portrait
haunting the hall.
I came to hate that clock
that percussed breakfast
laundry, the bringing in of
bright jewelled tomatoes from the sun
and patience on the flecked laminex.
Wing category supple taught
wheel powered and mounting
the fickle fling of gravity motion
the tingle of that flip high.
In the air you know it’ll have you
the ground is curved without give
you will hit and rise with the tumbled force:
velocity in control the skid in landing
foot first unbloodied.
Right the lean and tame that
crawling fear that pulls and tugs
and advises in quick pulse bursting
a lack of oxygen a lack of mind:
be inverted and know that
even if a second counts
you are flying, will always fly
air can hold your weight
that solid part of you leaping
is light and mote-like until you land.
We nestle
and match – one the other’s striking board
the sulphur flare of
our pitch
and burn.
I coax you to heat,
feed you pine needles and
you are fierce in your concentration
you consume these questions, these answers
these encoded woody stems
that once held blossoms.
As you turn and the light is
creeping from you so your face
is lit like a beacon and as blinding
there, you are me with that glittering eye
I have known you like myself
you have thrown flame
all along my secrets.
poemation 