A flower behind the eye
Roots in the skin
Seeking water not spoiled by sweat and tears
The touch of my lover
The softening of thorns for her handling
The shade of branches for her slumbering
I grow gentle in her arms
Under her gaze
I grow further from the ground
Bloom and flourish and shriek for her
A flower behind the eye
Torn from it roots
Settled in a quiet place
Brushed softly behind her ear

The soldier can not always be fighting
There must have been a time before the fray
When the man’o war was a child running barefoot over land without mines
There must have been time for rest
Time for lunch
Time for bed
The fighting man must still dream at night, of *** and flying and the boogeyman as I do
He must have taken up his own arms
Dressed in his own clothes for the day
Let his own legs carry him eastwards
******* his own head on straight
The man inside the camouflage still combs his hair in the morning
Telephones his mother to ask about the recipe
Tries to lose the last of his gut before summer brings the beach back into popular culture
The soldier too shall die
Die victim and perpetrator and ghost of state sanctioned fury-for-a-cause
Fury-for-a-sons-life, mother dearest
Load him up! Send him off! We shall turn your boy into a man! We shall give him honour! We shall carry his body home from the field on the back of a friend!
The fighting man in his bloodlust
Turns out to be nothing more than any other son
Loaded into a gun
Shot across the field
Into the face of a history who will call him Soldier
Into the face of the mother who will call him Little One at the funeral
Who will wail and and weep and tear the flag
The mother of war knows best the sting of the gun
The sting of the soldier in her arms

There is an old man’s walker beside the baby’s pram on the bus
There is something somewhere that is profound in that
I should think of time and cycles and the round about life
Of cradles and coffins
Of metal holding the body
There is a walker beside a pram on the bus
I think of baby shoes
Of my grandmothers slippers
Of my ******* boots  
Of the round about life

Always autumn in me
The plunge to the ground
The pull of the wind
I approach the end as autumn does
Slowly,
                    
                     Lingering in cold mornings

Never winter in me
Never snow or ice
Always only the movement towards
If it is autumn always
There may not be any spring
One cannot be reborn
                     In such a chill as this
There may never be summer
                     In such a wind as this
Autumn in my soul
This movement unto shall be enough for me
                     This movement unto shall be enough for me