Holiday: a man backstrokes
oh so gently in the hotel pool.
It’s breakfast time. Bean juice
coagulates on my plate.

I watch the man’s languid, enchanting
backstroke and, for some reason,
it inflates my heart with sentimental joy.
This semi-corpulent middle-aged man,
is, right now,
The Most Beautiful Thing On Earth:

His arcing limbs do not slap or thrash,
but plop into the drink like skipping stones.
He is a babbling brook. A water feature.
The splish-splosh trickle-truckle of a spa waiting room.

And what’s more, this forty-something baldy
gliding through the water
fills me with love for all humanity,
because he seems blithely rapt
in absolute peace
(despite the room rates at this place).

But then, I realise, all of this might be
free association of the mind
linking this moment to a scene in
the Oscar winning motion picture:
Forrest Gump;
when a legless Lieutenant Dan
makes peace with God (for taking his legs),
and backstrokes with the same carefree beauty
into a pink and orange sunrise

(funny how the mind does that).

And suddenly the bubble of beauty is burst.
The portly swimmer becomes just that
(FYI: legs intact),
and my wife returns from the buffet
with a plate of vibrant fruit segments; Cheshire melon
and the greenest kiwi I’ve ever seen.
Lo! Only now have I tasted true kiwi.
And I remember: I’m on honeymoon!
And my wife, in this moment, and forever more,
shall be the only human to be known as:
The Most Beautiful Thing On Earth.

Similar to the way Forrest felt about Jenny,
in the Oscar winning motion picture:
Forrest Gump.

what is this? some feeling like a song
after a lifetime of silence.
some touch to the soul
after a length of solitude.
a sense of comfort and ease
to relieve abject existence.

what is this? some feeling like a breeze
after wasting on a desert plain.
a raindrop on the tongue
after the longest drought.
a gulp of the surface
to a drowning man.
some feeling of life anew
to those who only saw the end.

it’s none of these and all of these
and inexplicable and intangible.
but it’s there: some feeling that
cannot be summed, forever finite and everywhere;
abundant and rare,
as real and invisible and precious
as air.

I saw things
that weren’t there before:
mirages of pain
I was once blind to.
But now I look upon
the overweight girl,
etched in scars
that ladder down
her pleading arms,

and the woman,
tall and beautiful,
who smiles with life,
but who's arm is
a hidden stump,
twitching with longing
for fingers long-gone,

and I flinch from my
seat at the side of the road
at eye-contact
with the girl who
crosses without a glance,
and I see the tattoo
of a rose, covering
the healed gashes
on her wrists.

And I wonder,
why I never saw this pain
before I had to move
with the help of these wheels,
And strength of my fists.

Holes are dug:
a rite of passage
for the young
and beaming
as parents delight
in viewing themselves
from long ago.
The fickleness of thought:
the world has changed --
the world is not so different...
a trench without purpose:
made meaningful
with ethereal sentiment.

There will always be
this life on the sand
where little can be
enhanced or altered.
Grit will always
find its way into
the unseen grooves of
bags and toes;
the sand of timelessness,
of now and yesterday.
Castles are built and
fall and are built again.
And the sand will remain,
and little, so little,
will change.

A poem is a capsule
Of a moment.
It's how I felt
At the time.
Right now, for instance,
I feel okay,
But I expect
I'll change my mind.

should the poles meet as often as they do?
if formed by hands on high,
why lay ecstasy and pain
as the first clay?
opposites
within the same woman,
the same flesh.
release me
from this poison ******.
it is death.
surely, longevity passes over
those who submit
to its bitter tang,
the moreish pain
that lives beyond parting.
when the highs and lows
call a draw, where can
one turn?
I am defeated.
the game has won.
I can feel nothing alone.
where do i sign?

I must have seen
a hundred by now.
But I'll never bore
of the spin away
from the warming light,
the clouds transformed
pink and violet,
and the blinding glow
split in two,
like yin and yang,
like Saturn.

Tucked into a
cotton pocket,
weaving gold thread over
the cauliflower horizon.
A crown of shadows
blooms in the mirrored sky,
as the orb I'm tethered to
turns it's shoulder
on the light again,
and I nod goodbye to the sun.