For a moment,
I fully expected
to see God's face
staring back at me
in the onion I had sliced.
But I didn't.
Soon after,
the onion sizzled.

Twice, recently, I've seen my daughter's stuffed toy Moomin
lying on his own in the hall and it's filled me
with an intense sadness.
Today, she'll be back to pick him up - her constant childhood companion - she'll squeeze him tight, love him, kiss him and
send his once white fur ever more grey.
But tomorrow? Or the next day?

Solitude is a dull parade -
The things unsaid,
Or said too much,
But never really shared.

The promises and fragrant lies;
How sweet they smell,
I forget how,
I never knew they’d sour.

But for careful untold truths
That wrap us up
In careless knots,
Simplicity itself

We’d live; beyond the tangled lines
Of lives. The dull
Parade, would fade,
And fade away to grey.

as the shortest day peeps out
from underneath the winter's grasp
the steady robin sits aflame
a flickered dance upon the fence

his eye an ever sideways trance
a grace note tucked within a song
for every hop, a little bow
the worldly nod to his know-how

I wish I had just some small part
of the patience he exudes
returning every darkened day
to flaunt the patterns of his art

I am not a robot
I am only
following
instructions

it's familiar trickery
in a master's hands -
the ever falling melody
occasionally lifted
just enough
to let the sunlight
shine through

How many moons did I really miss?
The big, the bright, the bold, the blue -
the daytime crescent
or a midnight swan?
Did I count them all
on my two hands?
Or was the same moon sat there
all along? Enticing and bewitching those
that dared to take the time away
from all the mundane earthly stuff;
the daily bluff, the soulless bleed.
What if every single moon was new?
And those that basked beneath
the moonshine never light
knew how it's luminosity,
shaped the eye.
If I chased it round the earth
would I see it slowly turn?
Or would I turn myself
to lunacy?