He sat there, same table, most Sundays
If he came alone, he did not stay that way long
His corner table would fill, with nodders and smilers
People with pint glass recognition of all he'd done
His special tankard 'World's Strongest Man'; no year, for that would be cruel
I watched him as I grew, from colouring book infant to
The girl who stood a round for her father
Each year he shrunk a little, those
muscles softening to fat
And still they came and asked him to bend their metal pipes
And carry a man on each shoulder
One handed him a rope for his teeth, and
Asked if he would  tow away his junker, they
Laughed and bought him another round, mate, another pint
For the World's Strongest Man
He told me once, when I was 10 and curious,
The stories of his ink marks, the places
He had been and all the strange and wonderful things
He had lifted and bent and pulled and
Training with the Sumo, ice hole bathing with Inuit,
wrestling hobbled Russian bears, the lion that left 'see, this mark here'
A yawn when he'd placed his big, shaggy head
In the beast's mouth because
He too was a king
I asked him once, when I had grew
If he should have been
More like bamboo
Thin and reedy, bending in the wind
No substance to speak off, yet
With a strength belieing it's slender form
He told me, as the acolytes trudged past
In heavy boots and rough winter coats
'All I ever wanted was for someone else to take the weight, even for a moment, but now it's too late'
I smiled sadly, because I understood
Tested strength and how it withstood
And yet I felt his heart-deep sorrow
At looking back, not to tomorrow
I did not buy him another pint, I walked with him instead
Through the door he'd left a thousand times
To his taxi, usual driver, 'home, mate?'
Lean on me for now, I said. I'm stronger than I look.

I thought I had a thousand words
Folded, like cranes, to gift you
My mouth cannot make their shapes,
They taste of regret, which
Unsettles me, you
Once as familiar to me as
The veins that decorate my
Wrists that I offered you, soft,
Meatless and vulnerable, I
Handed you a cunning blade and
Prayed you would not cut too deeply, or
Too casually, with disregard, I
Took my time in concluding that
A weapon must be passed, with
The blade turned inward, toward
The one who would be wounded most harshly, were they
To stumble and fall upon the cutting edge of trust.

The earth is not flat, yet
we talk of corners and I
Am loaned a smile, in
knowing you are in one
Your daily business, gone
about and your thoughts
Turning sometimes, twice
to me in my window seat
Watching the tumble of
grey-white cloud kings, riding
Across the same sky that
may adorn your brow, so
Quizzical, full of wonderment
that on this sphere of mud-flats
There are still new findings
to be had and jewels hidden
In the dazzling form of persons
in the corners of my globe

Crack my spine and
Lay me open
Am I in those words before you?
Or a footnote
An observation
Scrawled in the margins

Run your hands
Over me
With your eyes closed
Am I Braille
Beneath your fingertips
Can you feel me?

If you lose
Your Self
Come and find me
Hidden in sentences
A map of
Paragraphs

Somewhere in
The shifting corridors
I am a haunt
A shadow; memory
One of those
Lost girls

Shifting scenes
And new
Locations are
Disguises, I
Am buried in the pages
Of your story

Like Echo
I have faded, until
All that remains, is
My voice imprinted
On a recollection
In a loss

When the sea is blue glass brightling
and no secrets haunt its depths
I watch your yellow laughter as it sails beyond me
and does not look back

When the fields are busy with greening
I feel your hands, lazily skimming
the tall grass blades, waist height
As you languidly stride past me
Your gaze not falling behind

When the purple dusk air is full
Of vermillion butterfly wings
I see you turn slow circles, your face towards the sky
Spinning ever beyond me

I saw the grey-black thunderheads and the tang of ozone
Silver-violet forks of heaven's anger
Scarred the earth beneath
The seas foamed and swelled, thunderous with ire
All gossamer things scattered, scared

And I saw you, turning
A question in your eyes;
But
I will not be your haven
The arms you reach for in the dark
You turn from me in sunlight
Fleeing like a dust-mote, away

I will not be your haven
Unless ...
You promise me you'll stay.

The summoning, when it came, I answered with whale song of my own
And all the water between did not distort the sound, the resonance
Of tuning forks at the same pitch, that offended most ears who heard them
Most did not; instead held cupped hands to their heads and heard only
The rush of their OWN beats and the flat la la las of no desire to interpret those alien sounds
The ocean floor held hidden things, broken by time and the wash of happenings that cracked and buried them, both
And in the shatterings of these brittle things I showed you neon fish
Darting through the ruined holes of ancient amphora, making playgrounds of their ruin
I showed you scrolls with ancient learnings, written in ink that proved indelible
And the meanings; I knew enough to draw a map with some destinations
Yet the road was only a suggestion of words I could not grasp, their translation lost in years of forgetting how
I asked you once, I am certain, in syllables that almost made my words
If anything could be formed from shards; you had no answer, I
Knew that all of the breakings shone back a whole in each, my
Me reflected a thousandfold, not broken but in pieces

I asked the zoo-snake, as it
Basked in the glow of
An artificial sun,
Bathed in the ichor of its rebirth
'Does it hurt?'
I nodded to the frail shell
Of its shed skin, the
Ghost-scales perfectly rendered

'Hurt is the wrongword, it
Begins as a shrug, a
Loosening of bindings, like
A well-read book starting to
Work free of it's cover. I
Know from memory, that
Changing is necessary, yet
It's stirrings disquiet me still'

I saw my reflection in the
Glass of his world, a wraith
Hovering outside
Imposed on his wooden cave
The water where he dipped
His forked tongue
Never rippling or changing

'Is it akin to dying?', I
Question him again and
Wait for his thoughts to
Catch up with his mouth

'All things die, given enough time
Love, memories, convictions,
All pass, but this is a
Temporary dying, this is
Being a ghost in the world,
Still breathing'

We are not so different, You and I
Both vital in this moment, though
I would that I, too, could turn my gaze so keenly
To the truth of who I have been

I see you often, weighted down
With the crush of ageing
And the companionship that
has become less comfort
Than choking vine, I
See little joy when you speak
Of the one you've grown old with
But your generation knows duty
and I wonder if mine ever will,
Too caught up in
all the choices we have
Yet as you shuffle
from the front seat of the bus,
bell pressed, bags gathered,
I notice
A trailing red wire, earbuds bouncing
Against the practical navy blue of
Your all-weather jacket.
I ask what
Music is in your ears right now
Elvis, you tell me, Elvis,
with a girlish smile, sunken into
The hollows of your papery cheeks
One day, when I'm still listening
To Jubilee Street, loudly on repeat,
I hope someone sees
Who I have been
With such clarity