An eruption of exuberance
To thrill the dawn with light
And dance flowers in the breeze,
Still fresh from the bed's wallow.
To break the snoring drift
Towards the eye glistening moment of waking.

And then all these senses rush at once
To ferret and fidget the confines of my flesh
To dance their whirligig explosions in my blood
With eager threads of excitement pulsing in my skin
To chase the schoolboy morning
beyond the hills
With rattling bicycles on muddy trails.

I stutter out the flush and form in words
Darting thus and fro across the screen
like electric jangling
From the dangling fingers
Wrangling with the hammering keys
As if these magic notions could fluster
Beyond the moments of my joy.

My soul aches to be OUT THERE!
Beyond those moments of joy
Beyond the sleeping bedrooms
Beyond the bicycles
Beyond the hills, and flowers and sky
I want to spiral like galaxies
And dance with planets on the pin cushion dark
Sparkled with stars and clustered nebulae.

I really can’t believe, sometimes,
That all this sense of being
Could be contained in me.

Today you leave
For your home and family
You tread a star-struck path across northern skies
Yet remember one
Who, in tears, leaves you happily
For he still feels your sanctuary

And you my love
With several splendours shining
Were I to stain the sound of your flesh with my words
Then I would drink deep on those tears
To leave you smiling
In the hot mid-summer’s morning

If words could change
I would turn them into love
To let your body sparkle at this leaving
And I would make this place a bed
With no roof above
But changeless words are not enough

Sometime? Later?
Will we meet on avenues?
Will we once more naked lay inside that peace
As lovers in a gangling heap
When the loving’s through
Will we then say, “we did it too.”(1)

1 We Did It is a poem by Yehuda Amichai and well worth reading

From giddy heights I fell
as angels might fall,
Like wishing stars across the velvet skies,
Falling for a thousand years
And feathering your retina with stardust.

Beyond this ocean of time
Where the heart beats like whale-song
And the lungs rise and drift like daylight.
How many angels have danced like may-fly
In the deep chocolate of your eyes?

Tonight the drool of my words
Are shimmering dreams and invention.
I drizzle like hot fudge on frozen vanilla
and allow the tumbling rivers of sweetness
to caress the butterfly vibrancy of your drums
The way a wave would love the shore
But forever belong to the sea
.
Yes, to dance in your ears like drums
And to dance in your eyes like fire
The dance of my fingers
and my faltering breath
Almost grasp that magic light
In the unrecorded fathoms of your flesh

As if my being responds to night,
I seek the cool and dark places
Where my heart can lay spellbound….

Waiting for the land
Like a wave,

Like an Angel falling

Just as you go to bed.
when the day is worn and old
and all you want to do is sleep;
take me with you
in the travel of your dreams.

In the late evening
when all the earth falls away
and the world soothes your open flesh
with soft fingers of breath and temperature.
Your open soul is caressed
by the ever unfolding spirits
of love and joy.

Take me with you
In the quiet drift of such places.

We sit in the still
and through tiny buffeted windows
watch the stubborn shore arrest the fierce sea.

An old clock tocks as slow as winters
as we recall the beach of crowded summers

The cold wind whispers along the scurrying dunes
to throw the sand in abstract arcs
against the ice blue sky

In large coats, billowed scarves
and stout boots
we trudge against the bickering wind
blustering in its niggling argument
far into the sea.

I never thought our steps
could be this close
as we huddle and cower
against the wind

and in a tiny distance
the gale rips up our prints
as if no foot had ever trod.

Yet behind our watering eyes
We know that once two footsteps touched
Our shoes kissed
in the wild wet and wintry night

There will be warmth
in the accordion blessed bar
with pipe smoke leering to the rafters
and yellow light from candled glasses
casting tall shadows
of the shawled women
waiting for the long lost sailors’ return.

Shall I be a sailor then
to board the narrow boat of your body
in all the crash and yaw
the swell and deep
the thunder and breech
the pounding and clamour
until in the safe soundings
in the harbours of morning
we drift like flotsam
on the shoreline of sheets.

And driving home on a damp Sunday
will we marvel at the twisting rain
and how the tiny ship of our footsteps
survives the howling gales
and the all wild wide oceans of our watery ways

I woke at two
In the deep dark
with rain making soft lullabies
beyond the window.

In this space,
this moment
beneath the mantle,
There are splatters and deltas
Splayed like stretched fingers.

The drip from overhangs,
the dribble from ledges,
the patter at the glass,
as sure and soft as fingers on flesh

and there the hush
like breath against a summer tree
or a sigh of ghosts; still warm
with the memory of lost loves

So for a little while
I lie down in the darkness
and listen

Concealed there,
Somewhere, inside your holy body,
beneath the lines of life that lie so shallow
is a soul.
One grain that must be entirely you.
Yet when I look I see but a shell hollow
And lonely.
Let your flesh evaporate away.
Let your mind find that kind of true emptiness.
That spirit,
lost and locked beneath your temple skin,
let it rise and turn your being into gold.