A Jurassic forest - a
tense moment watching
my T Rex, grazing lightly
on the jugular

vein of some docile lizard, with
a toothy grin, when
Alan's mum stomped into the room
bellowing dinner

time and the intervening million
years or so turned
in a whirl of pages, tumbling
legs and screaming kids, and a jumble

of Alphabetti Spaghetti tubes, limp
in their bloodied ketchup pool,
clearly out-flavoured
the remembrance

of things
past.

Swimming in brackish waters off of Helsinki thinking
These waves are very high and very frequent I felt ****
(I hoped it was ****) brush at my feet then something rough
Scraped against my thigh as my breast stroke failed
To keep my head held high and slightly salty water went
Into my mouth and across my eyes and I stopped

Treading water long enough to rush one hand over my face to clear
Things up and kept telling myself as I swam further out no
There's no sharks in the Baltic what you felt
Must've been **** or a rock and even

This far away a thing
Can touch you

And you're never really sure
What it is

In this dream

  you're walking in a wood
  stopping sometimes
  to pick up sticks

In this dream

  you're making up bundles
  tying them with twine
  to carry them home

In this dream

  I'm a couple of steps

  behind

Where does the time go
When your holding those
You love?

Time flows out of you
Into the love. And the love

Only grows
As your time
Goes

Strangely
everything stopped

An Oystercatcher paused
orange beak stuck
in the sand

Curlews stood
their long beaks curling
back to the land

A Sandwich Tern caught
mid-dive
also stopped

Even the noisy Ravens didn’t
tumble down

Satellites and stars    unseen

held
as the tides

almost

rocked


Slowly        we made our way

hand
in hand

Where the rising field
folds
under the light
horizon
taking the land out   up
into the sky
and you've no idea what lies
on the down *****
to a ditch
past a scattering
of cows;

beyond the lamp in the window
where the unshut curtain
hangs
as a figure appears pauses
bends to look at something     takes
it away and leaves
to read and read;

at the bus stop people
standing
waiting for a number
a shape

a co-incidence of time
and place;

and you've no idea who
or why:

this the axis
of the mind.

The cry of the Common Gull
is a yik;

it’s a wild
and high-pitched
yelp.

It sounds like an Apache
in an old Western
the moment before he strikes the Cowboy
with his Tomahawk.

When there are a few Common Gulls together
all making that high-pitched war-cry
it sounds just like an attack:
I look to draw the wagons
in about.

As soon as I hear them I’m back
down in the Cove
playing Dead Man’s Dive;

it’s almost as if
you were alive.