I’m often afraid
Of what I can’t always say
Not knowing is sure to make fear
Multiply upon itself until I cannot
Breathe and my heart races as if it
Can run away despite my body’s
Stillness
Frozen like a rabbit hides from
Slathering wolves
But my wolf is not so solid, its sharp
Teeth and ember eyes change into
Something with which I cannot
Reason
Maybe it is nothing I fear
Dark branches stretching out
Into night drenched
Solitude
Headlights my only solace from the
Dizzy roads and inky stars
What are they hiding, those
Branches
Perhaps wolves, perhaps nothing
I prefer the wolves

I awaken expecting the familiar dread
But instead I feel you wriggling in my belly
You guide me back to reality;
My heavy limbs resting on the sheets
The morning sun streaming in the window
No worry or fear; no decision to be made
Just the sun’s rays warming my body
And you gently moving,
Leaving this message of clarity and hope.

Maybe it was a dream, maybe not, I can't remember now
Walking homeward across town
Suddenly there came this fog in from the sea
It covered the harbour and the streets, enveloping everything
   so it seemed
A fog so thick...so dense, I'd never seen its like before
All you could see was the slow drip of car headlights
As they'd emerge from out of the street next to me
Eventually I had to stop, I couldn't go on, couldn't see anymore
It was like everything had just faded away until all that was left,
   all that was left there... was me
But then - suddenly! Looking up. There! Right above me
The huge spire of a Church, towering up,
Like it was coming out of the clouds
I was amazed... awestruck
"Surely this was it" I thought, "surely I'd found it
(That which had been lost... lost for so long)
The Church at the End of the World looking down on all
    Eternity",
Even now after all those years I still had a memory of you
You were there... right at the beginning, right at the start, you
   were there
Those nights when I slept as a little child
You used come to me, come to me in the quiet, in the still of
   the night
I used enter and roam your hallowed halls...look out on your
   golden city...with eyes wide with wonder
It all started to come back to me
I grew excited, so excited
Because I knew! I remembered! I recognised you still!
You were there, all there just like you had been all those years
   ago
And you were the same, the exact same, you hadn't changed in
   any way
I saw the old familiar road down to you open up before me
And then the Bridge across appear
And then entering through your Gates
My heart it leapt inside me and my eyes they were filled with
   tears
I'd found it...found you again
The Church at the End of the World.

I shared a moment with you today;
for once,
I was just
                     Present.
Not plagued with the what ifs,
The constant dialogue,
Bewitched was I
by nature’s percussion,
Dancing a melody outside,
I wrapped us in a blanket,
You calmed -
We both were still,
Our souls connected in a song:
A simple lullaby,
In your eyes sang the Universe,
It echoed back in mine,
An orchestra of consciousness
that I’ll treasure
for a while.

And her name
Forever ingrained on my breath.
I fall witness
Lost in a daze,
Staring off into the sun.
Her name sweet.
Though often stung.
A tattoo everlasting.
A reminder of a time spent.
Her name.
A harvest of grain left behind.
Spread between distance,
A field covered in twist and turns.
Her name spelt in curious curve.
Stretched out.
A river generous in eternal stillness.
My breath a witness, in remembrance of her hands.
If I should ever rebel against heaven.
May I starve, shrivel 
Due to wrath.
Cheeks sunk in
Losing sight, staring into the sun.
The memory of skin fed to my lips.
Revealing hunger
My every word stained in essence.
An ink that fills thirst.
Splattered in the curve of my mouth.
My tongue forever scarred
By the kiss of her name

not my mother, but
those before
were teachers of stillness—
to choose it, feel whole in it
bow to it
and wait…

across oceans
my mothers wrote their stories with pencil,
or fingers in thin air
words carried, indelibly
over miles and mountains
in strands and time—

waiting to be found

I see them sometimes
caught in a turning breeze
suspended in Fall colours

clinging to another mother’s web

I feel their warmth in the weak winter sun
more persistent now
following the horizon

I hear them in my dreams, the anguished ones
lead-heavy and fallen
overgrown with raveled life
and rusted

On my tongue melting like honeycake

Rising in wood fire
and spring soil

they are my words now
to tend to, crystalline
and holy

I wait
and i sing

I have an adobe where I run
whenever I want to be in solitude
I call it my one-word poem
Between a meadow and a lemon tree
along the edge of a grassland.
Where everything in the world
become quite and wither away.

You are the tranquil stillness
after the rumbling of a stormy storm
the forgiving words that fill my sky
and caresses a burned soul

You become a rain
in an endless conversation
Sometimes a road map
to the world unfolds
With a touch
When I leave
I leave
A slice of an umbrella  
We hold nothing
But a deep kiss
In your unseen soul