I saw my world again through your eyes
As I would see it again through your children's eyes.
Through your eyes it was foreign.
Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens,
A mystery of peculiar lore and doings.
Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes
Emerged at a point of exclamation
As if it had appeared to dinner guests
In the middle of the table. Common mallards
Were artefacts of some unearthliness,
Their wooings were a hypnagogic film
Unreeled by the river. Impossible
To comprehend the comfort of their feet
In the freezing water. You were a camera
Recording reflections you could not fathom.
I made my world perform its utmost for you.
You took it all in with an incredulous joy
Like a mother handed her new baby
By the midwife. Your frenzy made me giddy.
It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood
Of fifteen years before. My masterpiece
Came that black night on the Grantchester road.
I ****** the throaty thin woe of a rabbit
Out of my wetted knuckle, by a copse
Where a tawny owl was enquiring.
Suddenly it swooped up, splaying its pinions
Into my face, taking me for a post.

I ask myself if I can do it
knowing deep down I can't
but the aching failure follows me
and calls me back again.
I oblige once more and get my pen,
sliding it angrily against this paper
because this crap is better than
a
blank
page.

I first fell in love
with your smile
then your eyes
then your soul

Before I fell in love
with the midnight sky;
with the summer breeze;
with the deep blue ocean;
with the shimmers of gradation
on the sunset sky;
with all of the city lights
in a starless night;
with the words and poetries;
and even with myself;
*it is you who I fell in love with first.

social
anxiety
trying to find the fight in me
the part that doesn't say
just don't go
just stay home