The river gathers
To squeeze
Its swollen flanks through
This narrow, peopled place
In flood, It commands
New space
Spilling
              down
                          the
                                   steps

Here
******* at railings there
Meeting again to move
As one fluid congregation
Not singing, but in prayer

I am here to marvel
Toe to edge I stand
On knotted roots
My eddying thoughts
Only half perceived
Rise like an ache
Behind the face
In the palms
Like grief
remorse
Or shame

Joining the slow march
Onward to the town
Of glass cast high in stone
Where intellect and adoration creep
My knuckles graze the walls
Now stopped by a half opened door
To examine the blood
The skin the bone
Inside, alter bound
I glimpse
The thorns, the crown

My shame is audible here
It shifts uncomfortably
Among the pew creeks
The hushed bibles
Again the thought
Clearer now
                    The feeling of apart
 The answer, half perceived

The cool air slips
Through the morning window
Rests its hand
On my warm neck
And passes on

Here the deep
Longing begins
That comes  with spring
The unbearable pull
That is the teasing echo
Of footsteps
Walking into mist
Always receding
Never reached

Is it the reverberation
Of an unknown guilt?
That, like peeling bells
Cupped to an ear
Die across a meadow

He is forever on the horizon
A perfect and endless
Breaking dawn
Of grief and joy

You
A soft brown neck
Glimpsed swaying
In your stall
Peace and steam
Rise, your odour
A gentle whinny
"I am here"
I pass in delicious damp
Dewdrop and green scent
Boots that crunch in grit
Ankles brushed by nettles

Creeping in at every edge
The sting of my desire
The exquisite
Have, have not
My thoughts
Too much

And So
I imagine
Plunging my hand
In your mane
The tight-knit muscle underneath
You allowing, for a moment
Though unreachable, really
Always seconds from a bite,
A kick,  
A flicker of disgust

So far removed
Yet I persist
At this practiced stillness
Holding out a hand
There's that breath again
The have, have not
The all, the mane
The muscle, the flicker
The cruel bite

Blind, inconstant love:
you rose up and shattered
on me like the burst salt wave
over the night promontory.
I was so unprepared...

And then you receded,
back into the sea, impossible
to differentiate from the rest,
the only traces of you
what remained on me.

No one is watching you
No one knows you are here
Your feelings are your feelings
Your thoughts are your thoughts
Take power in that
Curl your arms around your body
Fold in your own earth
Your are as dense as peat
With certainty
As black

Only in knowing this
In touching
Your dark wet earth
Have you anything at all
To call you own
Life is after all
Death without meaning

Whoever reaches into a rosebush may seize a handful of flowers; but no matter how many one holds, it's only a small portion of the whole. Nevertheless, a handful is enough to experience the nature of the flowers. Only if we refuse to reach into the bush, because we can't possibly seize all the flowers at once, or if we spread out our handful of roses as if it were the whole of the bush itself—only then does it bloom apart from us, unknown to us, and we are left alone

The white noise of tarmac fills my ears
The mint of a humbug sweetens my nostrils
Mix in the stale odour of mum's last drag
And you have the annual pilgrimage west
The cool windowpane presses on my forred
Like a mother’s hand on a fever
Hedgerows simmer past, my young imagination
Penetrates the haze
Who was that?
Glimpsed for a moment
An old man in a scarecrow gown
Shuffling in leaves and loosening traps
In no-man’s land, once known
Now forgotten
Condemned, he looks somehow familiar
A sting of recognition- this is me
Half turning to look briefly, I see
My own cold blue eyes, the same
Stoop in the neck, ready for the noose
A window opens in the front
For the punctual smoke
My thoughts ****** out by the vacuum
Now there is just white noise and nausea
Nausea, and that familiar sadness
Of a long buried future

7.8.23