[i.]

as if slowly lowered back into the tongues of dreams,
in mahogany halls, between stone and glass, between a blink and your thought,
sung out, in the silences laid adrift, before and outside of words,
said all sentiments, patterns refused to belie:

a flurry of days,
offerance in as many hours,
what was found in a cascade of minutes,
later on in the light:
no second thought or first thought.
no gain or loss, no momentum,
save spinning breath, in
hurried paces.

colours of the sky, leaves, sea, all things passed or known; these sit in no compare to lakes, lain, steady under your wavering eyelids. as small wings fluster through limbs and heat, passages become tracts, patchwork, spread and turned fibre, glowing all the while.

no question, plain or perturbed,
where the lights of our lives hide.
just struggle on, in some semblance of consistency,
vacuous and shimmering.
out on the plains.

[ii.]

gold, was each fleck, sent from strand to
strand, to clustering distance;

i, traversing, footmark in sand in moss over
stone under branch & root system:

alive was more than a word.
how much more, was a better question.

but, what quantity counts? anything more than a palm's worth?
more than the passing strangers velocities?
more than the earth spins; what's worth counting?
all is no less or more than one fixed, glimmering
aspect of a dizzying world.

you, standing still, in between moments,
neither recognisable as stranger, or lifeline.
neither hurried nor fretted.
this is why you linger: for that off-moment, i could almost
summarise all i was not looking for, but had found;
to craft twisting afternoons, out on arid lines, through
dense brush, in between columns of oaken air,
and bark,
and low whispers,
and, sung out:

[iii.]

on some further day,
we'll crawl away,
apart or entwined, to
find some open scenery or,
at least, to escape the
concrete and dropped names,

but, steady on, for life
is just
a game
we play,
with little time to waste
on second takes,
or to hide away from the
breathlessnesses we lose,
or give escape,

and, later on, down the
beaten trail, we sing our
separate songs at the
same time, but,
harmonious we,
harmoniously,
end up singin'
all the same lines, anyway,

so, here i stand, and sway,
and disseminate
my fear and doubt,
which look so small,
so far away,
so far, i've taken
small measure to
put down what i
couldn't say.