FAST AWAKE

"Nite. .love ?" Reach for the switch
"Nooooo...don't turn the dark on!"
"My dolly's scared!"

"It's no good...I got no sleeps in me!"
"I better get up 'cos
I'm fast awake!"

THE TREE’S GHOST

My uncle took an axe.

“No...no! ”
the tree said.

But he didn’t listen
turned it

into wood
silent wood

that only found
its voice

again
in fire

cursing and spitting
at the dark.

I return
to the wood

gaze into
the nothingness where

the tree used to be

It’s ghost
gazes back.

FOOTSTEPS SET IN TIME

The lightness of
your footstep

as you hurried to me

caught in the slowly setting
concrete
you didn’t see

holds your fleeting love
permanently  

your footsteps
greedy for me

paying no attention
to the world whatever

only knowing that
in a few footsteps more

you would be precious
and adored for who you are

your footsteps
still exist

echoing inside my tears

as I put my next step
inside yours

and the snow fills
the other   footsteps        up.

SKIN & BLISTER

We grin & grimace
drop candle wax onto our fingertips

as the storm
rattles our window pane

angry that we won’t let it in.

All night
it rages

toppling chimney
pots with a crash

smashing slates
it strips from rooftops

as we safe
giggle & peel off

our waxen
fingerprints

hold them
(tiny whirlpools)  
in our palms

those whorls
of self

unique to each.

I wearing my sister’s
fingerprints

she... wearing mine.

JUST IS

A bird sings
the morning into being.

The sky itself seems
to emerge note by note

from its tiny throat
as if it sings sunlight.

A bud opens colouring the air
with the scent  of itself.

The grass laughs with delight
in all its thousand green voices.

My naked feet
stepping through its words.

A flock of dandelions
alights about my toes.

Sunlight becomes the world.

“I am the here and now!”
it announces.

Season's greetings.
Sap rises without a second thought.

It just - "is."

A feather flutters as I watch time pass
amongst the garden's trees.

Wondering what bird owned this
balanced upon my palm

it takes to the air
as if it were the bird itself.

A feathered fractal.

A sudden gust blows a rook off course.
It stands its ground upon the air

returning to where it was before
the wind played its practical joke.

Oh how the other rooks chuckle.

A cloud does an impression
of Merlin the Magician.

Then impersonates itself
being a cloud again.

A lark skates upon a sky
as if it were the bluest  thinnest ice

that it may fall through
into some other dimension.

A butterfly half drunk on flight
pretending to be a flower...flying.

A willow bows to me. I bow to it.
Humbled by its grandeur.

I, the least needed here.
All this would happen without my mind.

My eyes given the privilege of such seeing.
I, a mere observer

trapping in words
what can not be trapped in words.

Time drifts and I am left
with all this beauty

the beauty
just in being.

THE ME I AM

I laugh
with a dead man’s laugh

(a man I never knew)  

my grandfather’s laughter

flowering like Springtime

blossoming in my mouth

not listening to the years.

Time joins the dots.
Painting by Numbers.

I see
with my mother’s eyes

the world
stealing into my mind

become music

anything it
chooses.

Time joins the dots.
Painting by numbers.

This gesture
is my big sisters

gathering me
up into her

nearness

tenderness.

Time joins the dots.
Painting by Numbers.

My father’s love
beats in my heart

sings in everything
it touches

amuses

me to see

how I

am

all those others
as well as me.

Time joins
the dots.

Painting by Numbers.

"CRAWLING INTO THE SPACE BETWEEN THE NOTES"

He surfed
and suffered

all the channels
forward then backward

choice after choice of
no choice.

All channels appeared
infected with canned laughter

as if the dead
were laughing.

The TV glared at him:
"Don't you dare...turn me off!"

He dared.

Switched if off as if
he were switching himself off.

When he did so
next door...did so!

To test the coincidence
switched on again

and next door also did so
as if in synch and serendipity.

Maybe he was turning on and off
the whole hotel.

Or other people's lives
who could tell?

He, the turner-on-and-off
of worlds.

Felt as if he could
zap the rain

un-rain the rain
then let it loose again.

Or making the hooting owl
un-hoot.

He was afraid to do it once
again to see

it was so
better not to know!

Felt the remote.
Felt remote.

Silence reigned.

As if sound had been stolen
from the world and

been replaced not with silence
but with non-sound.

Even silence would have been
a sound

compared to this
non-sound.

He watched the dance
of the lazy lace curtain

as if the window were
breathing

in and out and in and
out.

Or it were
a ghost

doing a Hawaiian
hula dance

as if his entire self
had been replaced

molecule by molecule
with loneliness

nothing but loneliness
a man made entirely of

loneliness.

Only then could he begin
to cry.

Somewhere in a can
the dead were laughing.