1.
I’m climbing hills today
in one, effete poet’s way
they could be metaphors
for all sorts of ‘big life things’
but in another, my belly
is about to give my knees
some trouble

2.
The sepia on this one’s different
there was sometimes bitterness
in steps made here
as the lure of the theme park rides
sat so near
but the years have done a lot
to replace the roller coaster thrill
with the heart weight of hills,
dales and rivers with tales to tell

3.
You remember I mentioned
the metaphor?
And the belly troubling the knees?
Well these things came to pass
as I hauled my carcass up the hill
turning the air blue

The metaphor? Decisions
that once were natural,
easy like breathing
now can feel laboured, burdened
when a step is placed
how can I be sure the ground will hold?

Even at the peak, where I once
could exhale at the majesty of a job well done
I’m now fraught with the thought
of the journey down

4.
This river is different
at home the stream accompanies me
on local walks, showing me the known
and keeping my chin up

Here, the bold broadness of the river
hides secrets and speaks in a deeper tongue
coarse fish, familiar to me
are replaced by those that anglers prize

I am both lost and a little more alive

5.
Looking into the faces
of teenagers dressed for town centres,
either striding ahead
or shambling behind
parents intent on extolling
the virtues of fresh air and nature
while feeling strangely out of breath at the climb

closer in, the adolescent eyes show
a plethora of emotion
contempt, depression, longing
utter conviction that life is happening
somewhere, anywhere else

but if I may offer some advice: relent
as in a few blurred years
you’ll succumb to the same fossilisation
and will need some routes to remember

Famed to have brought light into being, but
dark, dark you are my friend, passing
through me effortlessly, though I know
there is an interaction: week, very week.

Deep there buried somewhere in my soul
was a throb heard, when every miracle
that forms the chain of my life surfaces:
and I've been searching for you. I thought

you were beyond oceans, where sky meets,
until my ship turned around at the horizon;
I looked for you in the womb of terran vaults
and then in the planets and the stars,

and you have been collapsing fields and
manifesting timelines so I proposer, meanwhile.
You are not what I worshipped in image and
then smashed it and sought in formless word.

Every time I grasp you, you vanish, retreat,
bubble-being, who knows what exists beyond
this expanse we inhabit, these membranes
and curled up manifolds, where in the knots

I'm still searching; But before even this unfolds
in full, I discover, it is all dark, darkness
that holds these tiny galaxies of light in its
densest folds; Magicienne, wave your wand,

let us know beyond the dark and the illuminated,
let us in, into the secret chamber of kinship.

Walking past spiral arms of galaxies I hid myself in folds of a warped
reflected on the morning walls, timeline; deeds that filtered all light out.

Bent clocks, warped doors, stretched arms, Awash in the waves of your G-rays
But your song found me. bathed in sublime warmth;

I see your finger twirling universes out, I've seen your hand pick me up
your lips kiss the flaming skies. in every timeline I've walked.

Which manifold do you inhabit, I know you, time-traveler,
miracle-monger?

Hymns, hushed whispers,
a hundred jasmine buds,
the distant stars,
synapses.