I scratched a living here and there
I don't know where.

And then I found a glade a space
A place

To be where thin sunlight was enough to live by.
Love by, maybe,
Sparingly.

As broken fingers moved to intertwine,

And all the days and nights were breathing
Threads of air.

But it was where

A note was sounded. Pure. Away.

So I might believe

That your haggard face in that regretful place

Was not all there was to see or say.

Here she is she is she is!
My wordy wordy baby
A gurgling delight
Of diverse messy
Life.
Almost ready for whatever
you may bring...

Yes
She's a poem
She's a song
She won't be here too long,
But she can sing,

And all for you.

I owe a poem to that sloping road and gate
Outside the doctor's waiting in the sunshine.
The bare trees, cars and few people
Waited too.

Just a Monday morning
Outside the doctor's.
- Just a gentle kiss from the World
In the sunshine.

You gave me in the shining image raw with
Water, claws and streaming head  
- That oblate crunch of teeth  
Set in a grin that lives and dies with all our rivers.

Loving on the run,
You keep your red blood rapture close:  
Defiant body heat  
Amongst the Winter reeds and ******* eddies  
Lit with bone white moons coldly  
Whispering to the quaking weak
'you..and you - you will not see the Spring...'

But YOU - You will  
You've got it sorted you have - YOU!
And I know about your Previous -
Oh yes, Sunshine, the list goes on:  
That already-landed trout,  
The picnic scraps,  
The soggy **** (a shock   they   were!)
The little girl in daddy's boat
Who so wanted you for home and comfort...

But you love and leave them all YOU do.
Hey! Come back here! I've got more questions to…

But you've gone of course -
A bark, a twist, a finger (if you had one) to the bleary world.  

Taking your pagan grace to depths we cannot see.  
The Celtic torq of crystal bubbles track
Your ancient underwater poetry and poise  
This artist's camera lightly saves.

And me?
My hopeful words: a suffixed flap  
Of flattened gestures;  

While slim you slip away  
To snap your life on Life,  
Salvaging the Sun  

For Spring,
For us.

She just could not believe that she had come
To this

                                        Again

He had  said – Come on – you used to like this
Just for me – and us – it might be good.

- Try
- Please

For me.

Yes – for him.
                                            Again.

So on this chilly day:
Awkward helmet boots and fumbly gloves.
Cold and fear and knees near ears
(The pillion's lot on sports machines.
...and he wouldn't buy the chop...)

They were off, and now she hoped that was not a pun.
She did her best not to wobble and resisted the temptation to put her feet down when they stopped. Ungainly awful Stop Wait, Jerky Action.
An old film forced to watch.  
Miserable claustrophobia in  traffic queues, between a fuel tanker and a hearse.
Hot foul breath of diesel smoke.
  
She felt sick.  
She wanted out.

[The World convulsed, dissolved reformed
Things changed for her for once
For all]



The slipstream coming off the curved bubble above the glowing clocks buffeted her head with a roaring chaos that added to wild riot.  She hooked the next gear and opened the throttle wider.   The determined act of twisting the grip brought her body lower to lie on the tank, and her heart closer to the heart of the engine's breathing fiery centre.   A green high-sided truck disappeared over her shoulder into into her past: into non-existence.  And in front she knew - a climbing curve left and a stiff side wind.   She relished the anticipation of the change, getting ready to shift her weight, her eyes burning up the road - fixing the aiming point at the apex of the bend. Now! - the bike eased off the vertical, and healed into the challenge of a new world order of curve and cross winds.    
An alliance of forces at the Edge:  United,
Poised, and aimed by thought and skill -  the creation and flex of a true sword.    

And the noise!  

The noise was an overwhelming but understood cacophony – the packed high-RPM music of the Engine - loud and hard.  
The blaring exhaust and the tyre roar and the wind...
Coming at her from the left now.  She bucked and weaved a little with road bumps and sideways forces - a muscular fish in a torrent - but these were trivial disturbances.  
Together they were the embodiment of an Act of Will and Purpose -
THIS course THIS speed.  
She wanted more.  

More power, more speed - so more lean to hold it
With now a less than perfect gear change in the mix.  
A sudden bump absorbed by the suspension, and the left hand wing mirror blazes with a shower of sparks from the grounded footpeg arcing back into the dusk.  The rear tyre briefly spins in mid air – the engine screaming to the rev limiter - and returns to tarmac with a zwip.    A rictus of mortality  and terror shudder the bike -
A whiff of Death that lets her live.
This time.

They were through the moment.  

And she had kept the throttle wide.


Courage.  

No substitute. And its sometime close friend -

Instinct.

You live by them together or not at all.  

This curve was ending, and the speed extreme
Almost – Supernatural.

Difficult to hold her head forward against
The flat of the wind's hand held up in her way:
“An end to your defiance!”  

But she was not to be turned aside.   The landscape could only be seen clearly about a mile ahead - All else was pulsing blur:  
An unwinding ribbon of dark green and blue and orange - like a star field at jump to light speed.  But the moment held forever visceral –  remembered forever.       She thought her heart would burst with the joy of being alive on this edge -  
At this time  
Of all time.  

She knew -

There would be more curves and cross-winds
But Now - she was Up Front, In Charge
and,  BY GOD she shouted with the wind
SHE WAS GOING FOR IT!

I walked into the rain. And, turning from,
I watched the curving flight of a bird that
Noticed me the high trees in mist across the valley.

And now,
Birch log in hand I open the stove door.
A rush of radiance. Intense comfort.
Like someone's hands about your face,
Forcing eyes to meet in urgent reassurance

Of human warmth and purpose.

The brick wall.  Definition of a place
The rounded edge of each hardness is now
A letting in as well.  A happier tolerance
Of otherness outside. Almost a welcome
To my patch my place my being here
Inside.
Come inside. You other.
Come inside.

Roses are grey
Violets are grey
When you look at them in a certain way

It's true.


All the things I did - and could not - say
Now put aside by time, I will say now.

I finally see the multicolours of your life

Of you.

I want to rub you up the right way
I want to put a shot across your stern.
I'll wait until it rains and then make hay,
My bridges all are steel and shall not burn.

These inverted phrases weave a past intent -
To look back in blessing of our yet to be:
You'll see me like Impatience on a Monument,
To set my sight beyond the wood - to see one special tree.

Then delve in sky to find your roots  
To make your fallen leaves breathe green anew.
And know: untasted are the finest fruits -
And only words that make no sense, are true.

And so I end begin this pointless noteless song;
I have objectives to unmeet, things not to do.
I have lost all sense of right and left and wrong.
There is only one truth I know, Love.
And that is always…

You

You are my prime,
Unique, indivisible even unconventional
mostly odd.
Sometimes irrational
Yet composite and complex
Never improper!
You are my constant.
A value unchangeable.
Uniform, and consistent.
Never have I found you average
Or mean.