AH...SO THAT’S IT?

frightening Fear
un-saddening the Sadness
& its silences

laying Grief to rest
until with joy it awakens
lullabying Loneliness to sleep

sleep...sleep
doubting Doubt
(I guess)

that’s what
our love is
all about

GATHERING WATER

Never having
encountered one

before
except in stories

my daughter
begging to be

taken to
the well

the source
of all

her fascination
a magical tale in itself

letting the bucket
fall into the nothingness

that soft splash
as if

from a different
universe

& she
a charmed girl

the well
eating her pebbles eagerly

greedily

as if it were
hungry

for her wonder

the delayed...plop
enthralling her

and again…and...again
even when our store of water

miraculously grows
and we have more water

that we can shake a stick at

she orders
(or commands rather)      

“Come…father
let us go & gather

water! ”

And I
(ha ha “Father! ” is it now)      

get up
& go

gather water
with my little daughter

enchanted by the fairytale
of her laughter.

*

On holiday from the real world and living in the wild where our only source of water was a well…it became a ritual to collect firewood and go to the well for water. We would do both of these together and Tilly blended the gathering of sticks with the other task and so we also “gathered” water!

In her fairy stories where Kings were called “Father” by young princesses she also elected to call me “Father! ” which used to reduce her mother to convulsions of laughter.

Tilly as well as being a real live girl was also for me a fairy tale happening in real time.

I saw everything anew through the beauty of her mind.

OUTRUNNING THE WORLD

You ran and
the world couldn't keep up with you.

Here, in your third year
you discovered falling.

As if the world had
tripped up.

You look at your grazed knee
amazed at your self.

Blood oozes
from your chubby little skin.

I cry.
You do not.

You are just amazed that
there is an inside to you

that can somehow
leak out.

You dip a finger in
taste the redness.

Your laughter
is a spring

that bubbles out.

You can not understand
my tears.

My feeling your pain
on your behalf.

Or in this case
your "not-pain."

"Daddy - not cry!"
you comfort me.

You dry my eyes
with golden curls.

"Tilly run again...see?"

And you do so
to prove a point.

And once again
you are immortal

outrun the world.

Leaving your father
further and further

behind you.

You run into your future.
Become your self.

A tiny thin scar
the only reminder

of a pain only I
can remember.

LE RÊVE DE LA CHAMBRE

the room
so much

wanted
to get outside

of itself
always its dream

its windows were
constantly telling

of the world
they looked upon

but this was just
a story to the room

it envied the furniture
which came and went

telling of adventures
and other lives

that they had lived
almost as interesting

as the room's humans
who also came and went

with great regularity
as if there were a constant

crop of them
face after face

tomorrow was
demolition day

maybe there was
a new life to be had

*


One day the room was beside itself it was so eager to get outside itself but then the next day it had no self and was no longer a room just empty space with only the memory of itself standing in the air. I hope it is enjoying itself in its new occupation as a a breeze and a piece of sky.

I wonder if you think about me as much as I think about you

If you lay awake staring at the ceiling at three am
thinking about kisses in the corners of parties
we didn’t want to go to

Walking the long way home as if we don’t feel the cold
dizzy and drunk under street lights and stars
lost somewhere in the city arm in arm

The sound of your voice on the back of my neck
on lazy Sundays when we have no reason to leave the bed

I wonder if any of this would make sense to you

If you romanticise us in the same way I do