Standing conifers
girdle them down
to recumbent silence,
their eyes-formed-plates
laterally diminishing in eighths,

They wait cross legged,
sheltered by palms of rock
and shattered limbs of lost parts,
their minds slowly wandering,
wrapping up the sky and up
to rest in sky

They are dreaming of singing,
dancing so
loudly
in the cold and new night,

If you are worn,
take musk upon your hands
and onto moss-ridden stones throw
upon yourself the swell and
look,
it is large and empty,
a disruption of rock breaking in the air

It is:
root splits stone
twining dirt into
valley covering,
splitting pine into pine
and path into path,
cutting and wandering
by the foot,

A microcosm but repeating itself repeating
itself,

Disrupted, and if upside down,
falling into sky.

there's a world inside your mind
and it wants you to find
a place for others,
without changing
the bookshelves
the music
or the way that you walk through the door.
It might be the means of replacing
the fear which stops you from living
and giving
and laughing
as yourself.

some nights fold in on themselves
after too many years and decades
spent emptying oneself for others

like old letters re-opened accusing
from where they'd been laid to rest
found in yellowing files and folders

debris stirring from the shadows
unsettles the window ledge dust
irritating the membranes of scent

as memory floods with questions
tagging along like curious children
squabbling about whose fault it was

that we sit writing with brimming eyes
with the kind of solitary regret and shock
that comes when bodies in a silent house

wander around aimlessly trying to fill time
with their pointless pursuits and blinded eyes
imagining just another hit from some website

will stave off stories of their past they shelved
for nights like this when the spectres return
to bring the bill from aged secrets banished