tell me what it is you want,
the bits that make you tick
when the doors shush shut,

the want that scurries within
like some electrical current
making your skin tickle.

tell me what you feel
when he doesn’t ring back
and the phone sleeps,

an inept white brick.
tell me. go on, your head
a knot of faulty Christmas lights

and how you wish for someone
to grab your heart (not literally)
and make a home there

or just renovate it.

the tales of our todays
   splash into     tomorrow
my veins appear     bluer
     my joints creak louder
as if anxious for attention

hours pass while in some strange
     autopilot   stupor
paddling     among     memories
that bleed monochrome
   feel like sand   slipping
painlessly     from my ears

bright   names have grown   grubby
as years dribble     away
   from my hands

it must be universal

what’s the   medical   name
for over-reminiscing
   coupled with   too   much     thinking

sad hellos   float   in the wind
   goodbyes punch harder
     and occur too often

our misery clings to the windows
   like April   raindrops
     the language of young     manhood
smudged together in the mist
   incoherent     grey clouds
we remember   this but     not that

my spine   aches
I     misplace things
and next   week and next   month
     stumble into view
blurry as a frozen drink
   dangerous to     touch

breeze in hair
   cool whispers

   sand on hands
slinks between fingers

old band shirt
   silver bangle

   cobalt nails
watermelon eyes

footprint hieroglyphs
   sleepy pulse

   pineapple sunset
ribbon clouds

winter beach
   fresh love

   just a touch
sea-hush

I can only tell you
what I have told you before.

The rain drops
from the smoky sky,
pewter pellets.

It is quiet
except for the sporadic
crackle of a shout
from a neighbour.

The postman is a bloom
of red outside the window.

Straggly wires sprout
from my chin,
the phone rings
and nobody answers.

Headlines slide
across the television,
repetition.

Newspaper stains
my fingers,
a journalist’s black
perhaps inaccurate words.

Another day
becomes another day,
another month.

The sun rises
and falls,
indecisive light.

The man rides by,
gas mask on mouth,
another man at the back
in the air-quiver heat.

Debris sprinkled
like an upturned board game,
unreadable dominoes,
Jenga bricks,

skeletal wires
that wriggle from
used-to-be floors,
a building pinched in

at the waist or flattened
by the palm
of a foreign hand,
now a crinkled newspaper migraine.

Three time zones away,
the crackle-static from the radiator,
low drone from the TV
as they frantically jiggle

their pamphlets
at a river of horses
that chug past in person,
on a screen.

Mobiles are hooked
out from pockets,
a choir of beers
hoisted and sloshed

between pancake-hat girls.
They have their own world,
as does the child
leaving school,

the bartender wiping a pint glass,
the single mother
driving out the multi-storey.
The news makes

a big deal
but all I can think
is we’re the same and so different,
so different yet the same.

And here we are,
blundering through the cold, dark
early weeks of the year,
flames from the fire
growling up
the walls
at the King’s Head,
our local.

Inside we’re the jokers,
knocking them back,
lager in
our mouths,
a bwah-hah-hah
noise
between old songs
and the lost-count-which-pint.
Questions blurt     out
but we’re on
the razz,
sozzled.     A mate turns up
the volume, which one
I don’t know, lights
swirl
to x’s, white pinpricks
and would
I like another?
I slur out a guhon then.
We’ve all got
the zest
for more.

your kiss
is my snowflake

no two the same
and yet to fall

like a word nobody utters
in case they say it wrong

the others are like kites
tiny blue specks

blending in with the clouds
or a car in the fast lane

watching countryside
***** by in an avocado slush

there’s a lexicon
to be discovered

while fragile words
stain friends like coffee

if they’re not careful
or allow themselves

to be cracked
as a lightbulb on the floor

Imagine blue as building
the first snowman of the year,

red as the toasted marshmallow
above the fire,

then pink as a child
roly-polying on the grass.

Can you see green
as the smell of a new paperback

and orange as your toes
over the sea-licked sand?

What about yellow
like a hug on a December morning,

black as the rain
as it pelts the windows,

with white the sun
creeping in through the curtains?

But what about purple?
It is round? Is it loud?

Give it a nudge, note the sound,
let the taste cool in your throat.

for God’s sake
     the plot well lost

moths back in my head
                                 flappity flap
   worries
     quickstepping against the light

they’ve got it easy
   when I think about it
the kids at the school I mean

     know of the swarming
                 strange desire
                                to impress
   with altered pictures
     but no notion
   of depleting tenners
        raindrop-like friends
        that slip through fingers

my agitation a snare drum
     everybody else
          out of tune violins

I’ve never been good at jigsaws
     give me the next chapter
     of my damp-speckled twenties
     fully formed
with a warm glow

what was the question
                                       again

and it is this that interests them more,
that captivates their attention
for a collection of seconds
instead of contractions,

an adverb insertion.
Outside it is a stop-start matter,
from a deluge of white wisps
to a sputtering shower,

and yet their eyes swivel to the window
for a moment, then another,
as if this is more critical
than how to spell beautiful.

when they put it to sleep
   I am already halfway home
or already home
   my head heavy
with that strange social buzz
   that comes from
severing myself from shindigs
   but making an exception
minds skewed with alcohol
   a barefoot teen Fosbury-flopping
over a mate’s dad’s armchair

   before too long
I’ll think of their foot-long children
   caterwauling at 3am
the desk-job half-full cup
   of cheap coffee
our greetings infrequent
  dialogue Wyoming-sparse
say how I should’ve told you
   six mid-Decembers ago
my days a haze of disfluencies
   TV repeats and cold callers

Find it in the sound
of the crick of your wrist

the crinkle of an eyelid
drooping by the gravity of sleep

there is laughter
to be found burrowed
down the back of the sofa

but people who live
in static images alone

headaches dissolved
in purplish juice

it is so easy
to dance wickedly in the dark

look how it holds you

right through to the bones

months
blend together

head steam-swollen
by lack of action

daily ladder
aging technicolor

but enough
to want to be made

from crystals
see-through

to see me
you also

handful of glisten
rare element

visible amid
the cool stream

coming home to you
our dog hopping at my feet
my hand reaching for the drool-smothered ball
lazy lob into the kitchen
a shout fizzes down from upstairs
yeah, it’s me, I throw back

shoeless into our bedroom
you half-groan into the pillow
duvet curdled
eyes punctuated with tiredness
I kiss your chapped lips
shuffle my tie free

think I mention work
something about dinner
but night shuttles in
radiator cracking awake
as I glide into my vibrant
reverie of you

call a crime scene
there was a bang cracked
the day wide open

flip through the images
like police reports
who's arresting me next

neckerchief suits you
and the galaxy dances
on your ceiling at night

could be I'm seeing you
with a new prescription
shake rattle and roll

can't handle the bolts
imaginary electricity
is your skin plugged in

name may be cinnamon-made
or strawberry sauce but
Monday isn't a Sunday

to the bottom of it
red hair resuscitation ring me
if anything changes

Perhaps it is simply a case
of stepping on,

fingers bent into palms,
knuckles milky white,

the typically British palaver
of locating a seat

with their tasteless patterns,
a table with the sticky

residues of fifteen coffees.

Perhaps it is simply a case
of zoning out,

reels of fields.

Perhaps it is simply a case
of a phone turned on,

a book with the spine
not quite fractured.

Of course, of course,
perhaps it is simply a case

of not stepping on,

of wallowing in your ragged
safety net fashioned

from string, from dead skin.

But, of course,

you shouldn’t, but you will,
but you can’t, but you can,

but you want to,
but you won’t do.

Perhaps then, it is simply a case
of one foot in front of the other,

stepping off, fists unclenched,
pulse regular and thumping

at the wrists,
your own language of success.

Our faces
in the dictionary
next to awkward,
me clutching a can
of some second-rate cider,
you looking round the room
for a certain someone? For someone.
I flitter over like a moth,
my eyes assaulted by every little thing,
the earrings lipstick
top skirt heels perfume,
a barrage of chemicals
that send my mind whirring
as if sloshed in a blender.
Conversation swarms with errors,
my syrupy words out of date months ago.
Then he comes with his stubble,
charming smile that appals,
and the silence flows in
like a toxic smog.

So I walk in a little late, still high.
Groups of strangers on primary-school chairs,
no question that I smell differently.
‘We all know why we’re here’, the man declares;
forty-something glares behind her tall glass.
This week’s book, The Bell Jar, and so she reads.
A page down, ‘would you like to go now?’ Pass.
I think of my ill brother up in Leeds
as her pretentious voice clogs the room.

What a state of affairs, what a life. How
it is what it is, it is what it is -
My brother says that a lot, back at home
or he used to, at least, long ago: Now
he can barely drive through small villages.

All our friends are leaving
so let's tie ourselves
together with orange ribbons,

watch the strangers
in their sandals eat
freshly baked bread

and say isn't the weather
just glorious today, I could spend
the whole afternoon outside

letting the sun hit my body,
a gift for the skin,
or is it us saying that

in a European city sometime
in July, eating oranges and accepting
whatever form of love this is.

the snow flirts with you better than I can
when we walk back from the bookstore,
where books are discounted for one week only
and we passed recommendations
between the shelves and said
I heard this one’s good.

there’s discarded masks by the subway entrance
like malformed *****, mouthless and obsolete,
a whiff of Korean food that meanders
out from the takeaway
and I offload corny joke after corny joke not even worthy
for the back of a beermat
or graffiti-besieged toilet cubicle but you laugh
anyway out of pity I suspect,

the sack of books (Vonnegut, Glück, Didion) seesawing
by your side, our footprints a transitory
punchline behind us.

Some say a first kiss
is like a firework

so when I hear
that needle-sharp shriek
the wait for it
     b o o m
of amber drizzle
in the sky
I ask you
if that’s what it’s like

and you said
‘like that, but all of the colours
and all at once.’

Night-time looking
over the Liffey,
slate grey artery,

flurry of merry music
like a band of castanets
still in our ears.

The cèilidh at Shannon’s,
man with a bodhrán
and a pint of tar

at his elbow,
girls in skirts
a blizzard of colours.

Róisín’s at UCD
but tonight, here,
the silky lilt

of English
pouring from her
emerald throat,

her hand in mine
as a crew of mangled gobshites
stumble home.

We swim in our jollity,
BYOC (bring your own craic)
in the city

where three times
in the 90’s we were kings
of the castle.

You say your father remembers ’62,
when I look in your eyes
you say coinnigh mé anois.

What’s that mean? I ask.
Hold me now.
And I do.

Your lips taste of Guinness,
my head foggy
with you.

fall into myself again

i am the pale flower
you left out in the rain

never growing

but these things take time

one morning will sing

ring-a-ding-ding
inauguration day

become yourself again

champagne voice
or a cliché of your choice

does the new year
come in April

leaves that surf the breeze
got yourself going green

soak those lungs
with that fresh air

will it come it will come

you don't think it
but know it

the fog can only cradle you
for so long

until you grow

like spring flowers

tourists with cider
avoid sludgy leftovers

  briny exhalations
  of the unknown undulations

   sun-pecked - wrinkled as though
   Christmas wrapping

   sand slobber
   up to a young girl's toes

  left its fluorescent residue
  as hairstyles for rocks

water's unravelled applause
where dogs aren't allowed

exaggeration the word
   that   skips   on the front of my tongue

a bar of orange-fizz light
   a rooftop where the sky
is a pond-ice blue

     a blush of inky flowers
shadows that drip
     down
   accordion-stairs

the sun fits between     two of my fingertips

     conversations swallowed
behind windowpanes
or          lost in the clouds

a city that   groans   in heat
   chalk-white tiles
   blood buses

trees with          arms wide
green   condensation
    and a child with ice-cream

you bruise of colour
snippet of a smile
I cannot
          hold

     postman delivers
your   wispy   ribbons
of          silence

vortex that ***** me closer to you
     but   always          further away

wonky     syllables
make for
          a wonky
     heart

You make it all go red,
bottled wine crimson.

Pictures pop like plump bubbles,
sleep clogged
with soggy might-have-beens.

I bounce my words
along a washing line
in the hope they’ll find you
looking out
at a cement-made sky,
windows lashed
with crinkled blobs of rain.

Pause. A thought.
Skinny ***** of light
javelins across your face.

A sentence built
with strawberries,
not a comma
like an ugly smudge of blood.

On the TV
at the azure blue
Olympic Hockey Centre
in Deodoro,

our keeper’s
saving everything,
the Dutch careless
when faced with pressure,

the gold medal
swaying the way
of our women.
It’s the first time

I’ve paid much attention
to this stick-wielding sport
but when Webb swerves, turns,
clouts the yellow ball into the net,

I’m chuffed for us
as a cheer detonates
and there’s an ecstatic
bouncing circle of red.

floating
   tapestry of infinities

sparkles like the distance
   is sprinkled with apostrophes

lilac ribbons
   teal condensation

and somewhere
   in the middle of a middle

our spherical mass
  of wet paint-brushed clouds

blobs of rock
   brimming with us invisibles

So, another day of it.
The clock an instrument that ****** you
with its skeletal finger,
and now the night crawls up, covers
the town before dinner, the cold
licking your skin the way it can
every October.

You haven’t been yourself.
You’ve been stumbling,
legs like lead pipes, head
pulsating, unmissable signal.
Stand -
a conker crack scurries
     across the skull.
Sit -
pulse in ear, gut gurgling
     just as a long-blocked sink.

Sleep is a taste of petrol,
appetite so far gone
you expect postcards.
But at least the night crawls up,
delicately, coldly.

petrichor hour
colour bundles
on the windowsill
amber and blood
blood and amber petals
flecked with blobs
of rain

child chases the dog
by the love-lies-bleeding
amaranth ponytails
a rainbow somewhere
hemispheres of dandelions
breeze-swing
wet dog chases child

Early morning drive,
the blur of landscape
past my eyes,
vacant fields,
stationary trees,
and here in these crooked hours
between the first papercut of light
and the salutation of sun
are when the memories assault me,
a ripple of echos,
champagne hair,
a voice drizzled in alcohol
and venom on her tongue.
I’d be rotated, a personal Picasso,
and I clutch the steering wheel,
the pulse of something strange
thuddering deep in my ear.

more bronzed

rectangular packets
of muscle
almost visible

underneath
another white tight shirt

the stench of deodorant
or aftershave
or cologne

or a cocktail of three

enough to send
a throng of blondes
in my direction

eyes like sapphire halos
cheeks that shimmer

phones infested
by a palette of pictures

all samey
all shots of a head
tilted this way
that way
back again

and if only
a little more funny

pouring jokes
in with your drink

giggles reverberating off
from the gaudy lights

looking so Instagrammable

we’d have fan accounts
by Monday
our own personal emoji

ITV wanting us for a series
and a blue tick on Twitter

you see it too
you must

and if you say

look babe
we look good together

I’d smile and say

yeah babe don’t we just

Fad leis seo a thagadh cairde agus lucht gaoil an té a bhí ag imeacht chun na coigrithe. B'anseo an scaradh. Seo Droichead na nDeor

Family and friends of the person leaving for foreign lands would come this far. Here was the separation. This is the Bridge of Tears

so let us go to Falcarragh
where I kiss you by the corner
with salt on the lips
and a mouthful of chips

where my ma wants me home
by eleven at the latest
and the neighbour’s dog slobbers
its love against our cheeks

where we meet on the beach
with braids of seaweed by our feet
and the wind begins to jive
through the tangles of your hair

where we share a drink (or three)
and *sláinte (more than once)
on the crossroads of yesterday
and the rest to come

say goodbye by the bridge
with my hands in your pockets
our tears specks of memories
we scrunch hard to keep in

la la la la
is this what love feels like

or what I want it
to feel like when it comes
slam-bamming in

the snigger on the stairs
first saxophone note

my throat
knows the right words
speak
of succulent fruits
count the seconds
it takes
for our fingers to crumple
in warm baths

look
toothbrushes together
own side of the bed
I have a side
where I sleep
in the madness of you

la la la la
I can’t sing
but I must have swallowed a pill
or a bucketful
of elation
look at me go ha ha

does it crunch as an apple
is it flat pack furniture

cup of coffee
in the same café
steam to sip sip sip

my temperature spiking
blood thunderstorm
in my ears

coloured hair
new language
list of I’m becomings
you’re becomings

oh darling
not pumpkin never pumpkin
lyrically I’m losing it
love like this
or not at all my love

maybe a shelf
without books

maybe a house we paint
or a song
how it starts

I’m in a queer mood.
The leaves make laughter,

the stars waltz into
a glimmering white stream.

Kissing is funny.
Why do we close our eyes?

Is it an ugly business?
Specks of sugar

form a hopscotch pattern
on my upper lip.

The grass throbs green.
My fingers swell

like creamy numb tools.
Am I touching you right?

Does it make you cry?
And now another feeling,

raindrops explode happily
on my skull.

I store my worries
in opaque jars.

the picture

sloshes into view

like a wave on a beach

you haven’t discovered yet

there’s a tree outside

whose leaves quiver

like green flames

and there are books

on the coffee table

worn at the middle

from finger-flicking

in a lake of boredom


you are clinging


onto a voice that radiates

out from the walls

but you don’t know

where it’s coming from

but like a note on the piano

or the branch of rain

that leaves a slippery avenue

on your windowpane

you want it to stay

so you can hear it again

the cool cadence

flooding the room

James Hamilton Bruce (1st April 1864 - 21st March 1907), buried in Smoot Cemetery, Wyoming. A newspaper obituary from the day after his passing stated he was poisoned by the dried plum pie he ate for breakfast. Furthermore, a piece of this pie, fed to his family's cat, reportedly killed the animal within five minutes. He was a 'highly beloved' resident of the small town and is buried with his wife, the English born Annie Elizabeth Bruce (1868 - 1961).

The car brings us here,
another titchy town
with its one-floor houses
spread like piano keys
either side of the road in
road out.

A ramshackle barn
and pick-up trucks,
green ripples
of the Star Valley
beside us.

The vehicle grunts to a stop.
You say *here’s the place
- me thinking the place for what -
but we get out,
   stretch,
a wilting American flag
by the post office
our obligatory welcome.

You breathe in,
arms wide as if ready
to embrace where we are,
keep it under your coat.
Have you been here?
   Never.

So we walk,
see no face
bar a cat that slinks its way
through a square
of overgrown grass
oblivious to us,
tired newcomers to this
scribble on a map.

And then we are in a place
full of faces six feet under,
scattershot blocks of grey
tell us who rests here.
BRUCE,
a James H.,
21st March 1907.

A distant relation?
A swift shake of the head
but a story
gushes from your throat,
how he was poisoned by pie,
loved by the locals,
a father to many.

And we spend a minute
in silence
as that’s all there is here,
thinking of a man
we never met
in a place we’ve never been,

the clouds swimming
across the sky
like plumes of chalk.

My head against your neck, I am breathing you in. I am breathing
                                                       ­                                             you
                ­                                                                 ­                   in
and I feel transported to somewhere that isn’t where we are, your shapes welded into my memory as though building a house where each brick is another moment. A moment. That shimmers when light slathers its face, that quivers with a sound when we speak of things that nobody else needs to know. Doorbell rings, dog bark, jangle of rain on the roof. Our spider web of memories a pearly glisten. It’s nice to be an ours and not a theirs. Sunflower voice on my lip.  This is a private matter, a fragment in the shadows where we play play play. You are my shadow. My shadow. Magic dust, body of the night. Touching you is like a snowflake wickedly intricate in my palm. Look at you in my midday dreams, a spicy smirk, bringing your own brand of pandemonium. Bloodshot eye red, a day on fire. You don’t know you do this, no no, ain’t that the way. I still breathe you in. Ain’t that the way. Inhale, inhale, I say your name as if its clockwork, regular and there, my seconds, my hours.

oh
wondrous
you

among
the
wreckage

came
from
nowhere

to
my
eve­rywhere

Tell me who you are

Oh I am hoping
to grab your voice

and keep it
alongside mine

so we can talk
     look how we can talk

it's not pretty
but maybe

this is how
it can be fixed

fixed enough
for everything

is just a bit
broken sometimes

In the room
I used to be in
but now on the other side,
a ****** on who I was
or think I was,
knees bent beside punnets
of new faces
born well after I left.
They are rising like vegetables,
some already have
in the few months
that have passed
since I saw some last.
I’m sure they recognise me
but say nothing.

Gripping their lead utensils,
digging the pointed grey
into flawless white,
today’s date,
Tuesday 12th September

a mob of letters
compressed or stretched
as elastic across
the maiden line.

This afternoon
involves castles and knigh.
I point at the page, say
‘there should be a ‘t’ there,
on the end.’

They draw, content.
I loop around the desks,
a sporadic
sliver of praise
drops from my mouth.

1.30 becomes 2.30.
I think of how
they’ll still be studying
when I am thirty,
and a string of incidents
will keep flooding in:
job, relationship, money,
perhaps, crackling black words.
These pale faces
know little of the sort,
so they shouldn’t.

I leave them to sing,
this knowledge
rowdy in my head
like a shaken sack of marbles.

On the way home from work
a man on the train sneezed into his handkerchief
and a woman next to him, maybe mid-thirties,
mangled her face into a state of disgust.

Two friends were talking football
as I turned onto our street,
one in a City top, the other with a ball
scuffed with the marks of many a lashing
into the north-west of a park net.

Our daughter was doing homework,
exam season, a cocktail of notes
scattershot on the duvet, and when I asked
do you fancy a cuppa
she said yes, so I clambered the stairs
and she asked me how work was.

The game was on, midweek match.
Two goals but by the second half my head, drooping
down and again down, laden with sleep,
so I left the last whisper of wine in the glass,
undressed, brushed the last remnants
of a steak and kidney pie from my teeth,
put myself to bed, my wife a hand away.

and they are ready to pull,
   a crew of pinkish wands
sprouting from the ground,

clouds of green
   flecked with mulberry veins,
the soil quite soggy

from last night’s rain,
   grass tickled silver,
pewter-rippled sky.

I grab the first,
   press down, listen
to the burst of a crackle

like the spine of a book,
   tug it out
as if a tooth.

When I carry them
   to the kitchen I think
of the crumble to come,

the smell, the spoon
   diving in, exhuming a pool
of amethysts beneath.

Not knowing what they’re for,
linked questions
on an eastern future
where yourself, you’ll find
on the lip
of a fresh decade,
your tangle of metallic
teeth the answers
to somewhere.

so she puts on her scratched Doc Martens with the mud-stricken laces - because that’s what she wants to wear - swish and flicks the stick so the surf of her eyes have raven wings - because that’s how she likes to do it - strikes her lips Beauregarde blue - plonks a fedora atop her tiers of panther-black hair - because it’s her favourite colour - her favourite hat - wriggles on three rings - her grandmother’s, mother’s, and the one from Amsterdam - pins the badge GIRLS DO NOT DRESS FOR BOYS on her fluff-stippled dress - because she’s in the mood to wear it - because it feels comfortable - prods a white trinket in her ear that gushes Bikini **** - because she’s feeling like a rebel - fishes for a fiver for bus fare - knows the driver will silently judge her - knows the thirty-something mother will - knows the raisin-faced cane-in-hand man will as well - knows she doesn’t care - sun javelins in from the windows - feels great looks good her version of girl - later when her friends call they call her Wednesday - her kisses tasting of blueberry pie

I tried to tell the sea what I was thinking.
It simply unfurled its blue vowels at me,
a slippery blush at my feet.
   So I asked again; a similar response,
cauldron of murmurs into nothing.

Close by, a dog followed its owner,
a lady, lobbing a tennis ball,
the animal a black exclamation.
It panted excitement at me,
pink ribbon tongue sloshing about
like the sea when it sidles
back to where it came.

I asked, once more; there was no reply.
A glossy breath,
in and out, like all of us.

washed clean
for the premiere of another
year plus one

will the voices now
untangle when the tide
brushes them in

swimming through seasons
effervescent
a new glow you emit

and you tick and you tick
cast a new sunrise
into ****** waters

now it’s camaraderie down
the plughole dry pint glasses
and an unstabbed dartboard

as this Parthenon of chalk dust
played host to its last epic
clash of the amateurs

baize blessed for the final time
many-houred conflict of breakoffs
and ***** shots

a throng of fortunate bespectacled
punters quiet for the final frame
all back and forth

‘til two unknowns outside of town
shook hands proclaimed a draw
MORE the crowd cried

playtime was over but they’ll always
remember this tussle for the title
in the multi-tabled hall that sleeps

where an angry scarlet sign
on the entrance doors bellows
NO ENTRY to the memories held within

told us it would happen
didn’t believe them

our biggest capitulation
end of civilization

last orange blink
final carpet of stars

Asia first
then the rest

toppling dominoes
stripped streets

lead-less dogs
and hollow televisions

kick your history
to the kerb

man-made oven
own fault

must be time
to update my status

Look at this, I said.
Chalky expanse,
lonely, untarnished decoration.

Blush of cold,
branches rest as veins
atop a transitory skin.

Could be silk, maybe fur.
Winter discovery
like forgotten snowmen.

A footprint chime,
high note shimmering
through bitter liquid.

Murmurs of cobalt,
tongues of white,
our fresh heaven.