Whilst you daydreamed,
your eyes seemed to lose their sheen
and you'd forget  how to empathise.
You shut the car door hard
as  if someone who wanted
to aspirate closure.
We spent two nights at the Cooden Beach hotel,
so we could hear June Tabor and Oyster band,
proceeding this performance ,
we had our four slices of toast and an Americano.
Your pink canvas bag
and polished  stilettos
underneath the dinner table
hid an issue or two
playing a parallel game.

Sleep in your wishes
Drunk on sapphire wine.
The atelier has drawn
its last cobweb.
The empty Sun
has banished its 49 saints,
the road home
is as ephemeral as the
first punch rendered.

On an Archipelago
far from septic isles,
Deep in silent azure
I place broaches and pins
in a wooden box, for safe keeping
And set her dreams on a bed of lichen,
fields of leafy pathway stretching
she’ll nestle woven toad flax and larkspur
to steadfast her conscience.
The Birds of the flock
thrush and dove, sensing her bridle
rejoice in her Mother lode,  
precious be their plenteous dawn.

If a hymn is forgotten
there is no duress,
in the midst of a day
the willow still glistens,
the swallow
inspires another longing song.
Without words our feet
carries the distance.

If there is a strong ideal
then wait for the graze ointment,
perhaps by then
I  will never be caught.
If there ever was cedar shingle
that  needed repairing,
three layers underneath
may never be enough.
Tomorrow feels its wear
perhaps my palms after all,
will not be pious ,
yet under the leitmotif
of the gilled
fish bucket
Life and I don't listen

Some conquered words  muster
tithes of despair,
just for their being.
Someday ennoblement will sway,
a candle burning the spittle
of vengeance that should
wear no armour.

Charcoal, arbiter:
its equivocal
moral rectitude etches
the tableau off the dawn,
Swans too smudge the landscape.
The muses long gone ,
ghosts sit in red houses
once resplendent,
contemplate in whispers yet,
forever decisive in vacillation
their hands delineate,
the autumnal canopy
a symphony of coming despair.