I've got a crayon in my hand,
a color for every lost syllable
There's a brightly scribbled drawing
to make my mouth and head reconcilable

Close your eyes

Your world, not extending
beyond the soft quilt under
your skin, unending


Soft ripples of cloth, and picturesque seams
Nothing here but
You, me, the sky, and soft dreams

I'll reach up and take the stars from the sky
If only to lay them at your feet
to place them in your hands
to bring light into those glazed eyes
or give a glow to a world so bland

and each one would be folded
into a beautiful origami castle
I, the lord, and you, the vassal
Or perhaps me as the king
and you as a queen, whichever
My gentle playmate.. which one is better?

I'm a majestic creature of the sky
You're an empty-faced child on a quilt
Each star shall be used as a stepping stone
so I might meet you in the place I built


Let us meet, as lovers, or
at least equals
on this starry floor

Hot  I was when I came
Cold they told me became , So I became.  

Later they told me you are so Cold
So I melted and became Hot again.

Now when I am hot I burn myself and others as well.  
Now no one cares if I am hot or cold.

Fending off scrubland and bare, blue mountain
Logroño huddles in a heap and appears to slide
Almost lazily away from the slow-moving river.
Originality created and arranged easily
By the gloom trapped inside each filthy passage.
Garbage piles against *****, brown walls,
Crammed together and splintering in the sun.
And now and again a scrap of paper
Will fill huge as a sail and deny these still
October nights with a careless movement,
******, obtrusive and far too sudden,
Like the iron bridge which astonishes the dark
With such bright lights and emptiness, asking
For the beige mac, the turned-up collar and trilby,
The mysterious meeting, the garbled message,
When there is only me and the stone Roman bridge,
Illuminated and from another time.
The road from Santiago and the sandalled
Pilgrim loaded down with belief are no more than
A thing remembered or to wish for. But still,
High above the town, the twin Baroque towers
Of the cathedral resist change, insist on
More than a casual glance as I stand here now,
Balconied above the square, safe with French songs,
Edith Piaf and my cultivated tongue
Which nobody understands, and their so strange
Words which I try to learn, and don’t.
Then suddenly to see you simply among
These narrow streets and crowds of people,
Long boots and beautiful, is more than enough
To recall something bright in life after all.

(I)
a(l)most said it
but I
f(o)und
m(y)self
fa(v)(o)(u)ring  
a blunt pencil,
and a
burning
pap(e)r
instead

High on a ridge we lie in the sun
And gaze out over the fields below.
In one of them, the flames have begun
To plough through the stubble. It will glow
Long into the night, controlled burning
Preparing the ground for a new seeding.
The leaves on the trees are already turning,
Their colours red and brown and bleeding,
And there, behind the smell of smoke,
The smell of winter.

And I think how in our lives we fail
To burn the stubble, ashamed to let
Go, ashamed to let common sense prevail
And rid us of harvests soaked and wet.
All too often we do not allow
The new seeds room to breathe. We feed
On bad or failed harvests. And yet how
Can we be sure with letting go our need
To hold on, we will manage to escape
The smell of winter.

Across all the miles that separate us,
More than twenty years away from your home,
You tell me of an unloved city,
The honeysuckle and the baffled men
Who look at you like tourists.
 
You should be here where the sky is postcard blue,
Where the morning is a soft withdrawal of the night
And not another day you just have to live through.
For a whole day I've sat here waiting for you.
I saw the gypsy come early with his flowers and go.
I saw the nuns, like dominoes, wooden and stiff,
Toiling up the hill as the church bell lisped.
I saw the lunchtime shoppers, arms full of fruit,
And tasted the sweetness of cherries on my tongue.
I sat on waiting in the siesta sodden sun,
The slow hours of the afternoon, lazy voices speaking,
In the square, a beggar bent over a sandwich,
Looking at it the way some of us look at books.
In the evening a straggling queue began to form
Outside the bright, peeling posters of the theatre,
And I imagined you there, excited and eager to go.
A bootblack walked across to me as the evening fell,
His fingers bent and the colour of raw walnuts.
He stretched like an athlete preparing for a race
And told me had news from a faraway place.
He didn't, of course, so I just bought him a beer
And let him talk with his drunk tongue stubbing the words.
At midnight, we were swept back out into the street
And we hugged and said goodbye like old friends. 

I wrote this, Anna, because it's good to think that maybe
In another life, we might have passed by here together.