As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

describe how you think the sky looks lately
how the leaves seem to fall in a certain pattern
what the silence says to you compared to what it says to me

sometimes the rain leaves love notes on my window
meet me by the river
the one you see in your dreams

i dream of the river kissing my eyelids
the cool water a warm blanket
tucking me in to sleep

i never sleep long enough
something tears me awake every time
the love note blown away

i find i’d been holding my breath
a gasp of air through aching lungs
almost as if i had been drowning

I suppose I might have hoped
That we would bloom from nothing
Like a phoenix does from ash;
Wild imagination
Might be to blame, or perhaps
A heart- a flaming heart, filled
Of dreams that you encompass;
False memories of laughter,
Embraces, adventure, love...
I hoped for what I believed
But like a phoenix, such thought
Could only be true in dreams;
There is not much magic left
In the dimming eyes of Earth,
But if any is to spare,
Spare me the pain of letting
*Go.