The plants I bought in the market

Had nowhere to put them

I had this idea and then I forgot

In came little Dan

On a bright sunny day

Her face smeared red

She’d been out to play

Beaming she told me

She found them

When that whisper of a wind comes to me across the garden,

When I see it rise like a twist in the air, from the distance,

I know that the friends of my childhood are still with me

I feel their love and the gate opens

I had flown over Yugoslavia
While children lived and played
Returning, after their war and shame
We went a different way.

I hadn't seen their faces
Or known of their plight
I had been to another place
Which this poem is about

On an island of gods
In a sea of rich blue
I heard the loud chirruping
Saw no-one fight

Distant flashes of bombs
Over sea in the night
I was told were men fishing
With dynamite.

Oblivious I, while they died o'er the way
Treading gently the path
To see the cicadas
I sat down for a day

I sat on a rock in the scorching sun
Elusive they hid in my blindness, so near
A day and a day I sat on the rock
Patient, I sat, transformation begun.

As I became rock and my hair became clouds
Oleander my clothes and grasses my bower
I saw them, so close, mist had dissolved
Grasshopper faces and love for each other.

As the short summer night had passed me by
I went out to see the sun rise.
A bat flew by and a butterfly
The fairies shook the tree and a breeze whispered by
My sadness was soothed in it's sighs.

The song of morning's a wave
Rises and falls like the ocean
So high in it's frequency
All around perfect colossal chaotic harmony
Washed my spirit clean

The world is turned by the song of the birds

There was no war, or warning
"Stay inside" they said.
There was no reason
Only a cold and empty mercantile explanation
There will be no justice
There's no compassion
Not a single tear or token of genuine kindness.

Gave brave men inadequate tools
Leaving them to take the remorse
Helplessly watching London burn.

They say how awful
And retreat to comfort, homes of luxury
Thinking, that the poor are forever present.
They will make plenty more.
Behind the door they sigh and say, "How tired I am today"

How can they sleep?
My heart is broken

How can they not weep?
How offer a token?

Not a thought for the orphans whose parents tossed them into the unknown
Casting away ideas of burning flesh that was their own

When meeting a creature of any size
If it's not the same species, look in it's eyes.
Feel it's thoughts as they flit through your mind.

If everything is in the mind,
Living thoughts materialise

I met a bee who carried a leaf.
It held it tight in it's little feet.
It skateboarded down from the sky to me.