She listens to Kate Bush
on a Sunday morning
looks out on her garden
and the new buds flowering
sipping Earl Gray tea
a spoon of sugar she's stirring
then says to me,
"Bet you wish it was raining."

"How'd you know?"
"'Cause your a child of the rain.
I sense it in your smile,
but I can't explain.
There's a strangeness to your eyes
like a constant pain.
Just thought you should
know what I see."
I think she knows me.

She's planting out her window box
Young shoots are showing through
She thinks about the Springtime
And the garden she once knew

There were primroses and daffodils
Sweet violets white and blue
She thinks about her husband
And when their love was new

Buds and blooms open up
They scent and colour Summer long
She thinks about those happy days
When they were young and strong

Sunset's falling sooner now
Petals drop, the show is done
She gathers up her Winter shawl
Prepares for what’s to come

A hairbrush lies on the middle of a bare dresser
As dust cascades beside a sunlit window pane

A telephone rings out in an empty apartment
As the rain glows underneath a streetlight outside

A balloon is caught and disappears in the wind
Below the field of corn that murmurs as it bends

And that door doesn't close. I don't want it to close.

‘This is the final frontier’ said the friend,
as my eyes revolved around the ice cubes in my glass.
‘The world, it’s all figured out’

Unchartered thoughts, drift and plume through the
club, and lose themself to the night
But space is bounded by the small corners in this room

I jangle skies and oceans in my pocket, like loose change.
'Only minds and bodies left to explore.'

Swathes of faces, stretch from wall to door,
and dissolve in a fuzz that pulls me in on myself.

When I was a child, we’d lived on the edge of some woods,
Slightly hilly land, crossed with the odd stream or cowpath.
I’d walked there frequently, aimlessly,
Throwing the occasional stone here and there
(Skimming the smaller ones off the surface of the creek,
Displacing mosquitoes and dragonflies,
The larger rocks reserved for thickets of trees,
Rewarding me with a rich thwack if the missile found its target.)
Once I had tossed a great gray projectile
(All but shot-put sized, probably nicked and nibbled
By fossilized trilobites on its edges)
Into a stand of old horse chestnuts,
But the sound that emerged was not the woody report expected,
But an anguished and almost astounded cry,
Nearly human in its astonishment and pain.
I’d winged (more than that, in truth **** near killed)
A hawk sitting inexplicably low in the branches.
In my panic and puzzlement, I’d wrapped the bird in my jacket
(The hawk all but shredding its lining,
Adding to my mother’s already fervent agitation
Over having a wild bird in her kitchen not destined for the oven)
And taken it home, where we’d put it in a cage
(Not a bird cage per se, but the old crate for our dog
Who had wandered into these woods
A few months before when she’d sensed her time was at hand)
Where it sat silently for a couple of days,
Refusing food, water, or any other succor,
Simply staring at us with a searing look conveying a hatred
Which transcended species, language,
Any and all experience a child may have been privy to,
As, in those fresh-scrubbed, clean-linen days of youth,
I had nothing of the hawk’s knowledge of cages.