It doesn't always need to rhyme,
It doesn't have to flow.
Just give yourself a little time -
And time will tell
How far you go.

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage ----
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free ----
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I hve no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

You're just a bird
So fragile and frail
Afraid to fly
Afraid to fail

You're just a bird
Still safe in your nest
With feathers just forming,
Strong heart in your chest

And one day you'll fly
And spread your own wings
Into the clear sky
And over the seas
But you're just a bird
Who'll soon forget me
But always remember
When we shared a tree

You're just a bird
Who sings as he sways
His own little tune
Even as his heart breaks

You're just a bird
So un-self aware
Still learning to love
To consciously care

And one day you'll fly
And spread your own wings
Into the clear sky
And over the seas
But you're just a bird
Who'll soon forget me
But always remember
When we shared a tree

Oh the places God will have you go
And oh the heart that God will help you grow

But

You're just a bird
And wherever you roam
Think of me fondly,
And the tree,
That we
Called

Home.


|b.g.|

The feeling when you want to write,
you want to express,
you want to scream,
you want to shout...

But nothing comes out.

Everything seems to go deeper within.
Pushing and shoving.
Through membranes thick and thin.
And then an ache...

A familiar one,
just beside the heart.
It pains and throbs,
like the heart has had enough
and wants to stop.

You were an effervescent bubble on your bad days
A delicate touch, a whiff and you would burst into tiny unwanted droplets
Ruining the beauty of the view
Leaving us astray

If I were to sing a song, I think it would be sad.
And I think, that you would be surprised.
I think you would expect me to sing something happy.
Or funny.
Because I am the calm one, the one with the optimism, who says,
it's not the end of the world, not yet
not so long as we stand together, united
and i do not let you go, because
i won't let you fall off the edge
But the lullaby I sing is mine, not yours,
And just because you still have your hope,
Courtesy, in part, to me,
Does not mean that I have mine.
And thus, if I were to sing a lullaby, I think it would be sad.