The brick wall.  Definition of a place
The rounded edge of each hardness is now
A letting in as well.  A happier tolerance
Of otherness outside. Almost a welcome
To my patch my place my being here
Inside.
Come inside. You other.
Come inside.

Let me change my life. Slide down underneath the table
Of the right and proper. Rejoin the child
Happy fitting things together. Unfamiliar. But joyful with fat fingers.  
Hidden by the cloth
While the grown ups crown their cups with words
I do not understand.  

At any moment shoes may shift.  An edge goes up.   A monster of a face enquires.

I stare back. Smile to make them go away.  They do not know

Someone else's toes do though.

I will talk to you.

Let's get back to where we want to be.
And where is that, exactly?

Or just tell me - vaguely even - what would be good
For you, for me?

Now each day, suns are rising in a clearer sky -
We can both see the choices of renewal.

Emergent like a bird
We are all fledglings souls again.. Hesitant,

Excited at the edge of emptied air
That draws us on and out.. And more

And more
To as yet unimagined worlds, new wings

New felt realities we do not understand
But need - for  flight, to the horizon,

And our next breath.

Every now and then in the chatter and witter
And text and blather and the well-turned well-meant phrase
Of wherefore and because and if-then-but,
And mind the gap and be careful not to litter -
That plot our safe prosaic paths of tidy, well-lit days,
Someone walks out from this swirl of words,

But is not of it.  
And looks at you.

And looks at you.

Space. Now.

Something touched and felt.  
Time also woken in your glance - time warm
And tangible,  but - so brought to life -
Is thus gliding like an emerald snake
Towards its rest and hollow:
Towards another darker now that is
Loss and lost and forever loss,
containing as it will - no you.


But for now the dark eyes of your spell
have driven time away.
And now is all we have and all we need.
Together we contemplate the candle of your silence.  
And its snuffing out in absence.

A third presence at our table, at the end.

I walked into the rain. And, turning from,
I watched the curving flight of a bird that
Noticed me the high trees in mist across the valley.

And now,
Birch log in hand I open the stove door.
A rush of radiance. Intense comfort.
Like someone's hands about your face,
Forcing eyes to meet in urgent reassurance

Of human warmth and purpose.

I scratched a living here and there
I don't know where.

And then I found a glade a space
A place

To be where thin sunlight was enough to live by.
Love by, maybe,
Sparingly.

As broken fingers moved to intertwine,

And all the days and nights were breathing
Threads of air.

But it was where

A note was sounded. Pure. Away.

So I might believe

That your haggard face in that regretful place

Was not all there was to see or say.

Come let us look together at our writing
And how it does caress the world to meaning and to be.  
A word is not just breath, or dark lines on the white:
It is an instrument of conjuring touch; a single feather maybe,
But think what they can do in numbers in the sky,
Or singly, with a smile, when a face is turned away.

So it is with these. And more than that - these ghostly fingers
Take hold to lift together stories by the million;
Shape, lay waste, and seed, and seed again.

To grow stone lintels on a prehistoric plain.
Spell bridges, roads and dwellings  - all the necessary noise of life.

And then bring it back to this small line and time.
That points to what may be.