There’s a decisive moment
Between light and dark,
An intermission of clear sight
When movement becomes illusion.

For light does not hold still
But converges to a hundred shapes,
Fields, haystacks, cathedral portals,
A dizzy dervish, constant change,
Finally softened by slithering shadows
Of dusk.

A tempered darkliness folding
Into moon-glow pillow clouds,
Creating their own impressions.

Mistakes are miracle gifts,
An opening of spirit wings
Teaching what might be
Painted on the sky in
Numerous serpentine solutions,
A letting loose of reins.

Just listen to the whisper
Of the mind’s darkest corners
Impossible words joined,
Somehow making sense
Of this life’s chaos.

Let them drift through dreams
Into puddle-muddle messages
In some esoteric language,
Translated from the frenzied scrawl
Of love-letters written to a thankless world.
All poems are exquisite mistakes.

Sudden air full of winged seeds
Blowing froth on the dawn.
Season of simple joy
Wizarding light from the east.
Yellowing grass yawning
In the last of days of dry,
Zippy insect life slowing
To a tumble buzz, heavy
As sleep, just before sepia dreams
Begin to comfort the earth,
Fruit pungency replacing heady miasmas.
It’s like leaving a bright clearing for a forest
Sanctuary, light dimmed by cool shadows,
The gentle change of one life-state
For another.


,

A blink, a squint, a here-gone glimpse,
Sun-freckled, shadow-delicate.
Sudden breeze-breath prints a stream,
Ideograms unknown, passwords undetected
In time’s invisible unravelling, lifespan’s
Capricious memories.
Each freeze-frame re-invents itself
In past, present and future.
And age, a long, orange, tongue-licked sky,
The anteroom to winter solstice,
Guessing an elusive afterlife or
An untouchable emptiness.
Let us, instead, remember summer’s
Endless days, the hours’ extension
When water mirrors sunset,
When, like cool evening, mercy,
The afterthought of passion,
May whisper a prayer and summon
An angel.

It wasn’t sacrifice, no,
It was meant to be invention.
How many times have I climbed
That crumbling edge of cliff,
Confident, fearless of the wide sky,
I stepped into a place where
There was only air.
A hot rush of melting wings
And I felt what it meant to fall…
A broken doll, all twisted limbs,
Bruised flesh, bashed pride.
I had been warned of the sublime
Beyond a mortal’s reach…
A human body is not meant to fly.
I’ve paid dearly for my careless hope
Yet continue to believe there’s a lucky star
Somewhere in my horoscope.

Inspired by E.E. Cummings

This universe –
Timelessly alive
Strictly innumerable
Life’s path laid out
With careful intention.
Then suddenly a blunder
Called death unkindly persuades
Every word echoed in the sky
That it may unspring a poem,
Pitching each metaphor
To senselessness.
Still, it’s the beauty of eachness
That heals immeasurable night,
Restores the silent truth of earth
Where no particle is irrelevant,
Awakens the first sleeping wonders
Of spring’s green gratitude
And transforms dream miracles
Beyond reason into the eagerness
Of possibility.

Daybreak: a sleeve of wind’s voice,
Gentle ululations, then a smear of gold

There’s a shuddering of sequined water
Reflecting ice-veined crags still frozen
In distress.

A living lens snaps the moment
All the way to its vanishing point.
Then, long, slow sepals, slippery
As syllables of a foreign language,
Transmute to a giant bloom,
A silk-red reflection falling upward,
Tumbling over pink-sheep clouds
Interrupting the stillness
Of this blue-grey universe.