Snowdrops

Snowdrops,
I love you most of all.
Not for your languid, draping grace.
Not for your speckled, hidden face.
I love you for your length of stay.
Not a single wasted day.

Another Sweet Farewell

In the purse of night
I have found I am a pearl,
Or some other small, half-wanted object.

Content with the chance of being summoned
By a floundering damp hand,
Choosing me to perform some duty.

With dusk's periwinkle shawl dropped,
I am somehow not the jewel of the King's ring anymore;
Wailing when forgotten to be worn.
Lassitude dissolves me back to sand.

Relieved at having given up on being clever, graceful...strong,
My only desire now is to be good.
Cast iron shadows exile guilt.

The olive-oil stain of house light
Draws the red from everything.

Warm and missing, I sit.
Blood settled, crusades bedded.

At last, another sweet farewell.

Ribbon

The joy in a winter’s day
Is so frayed
It hangs by a ribbon in my hair.
I long for the weight
Of Summer’s heaven
To break the thread
Of it hanging there.
Out of my head it unravels
From where I’ve had to keep it tied,
Spilling well out of my grasp now,
Like or else it might have died.
I can see my ribbon still though
Braided in the dusk,
What will I tie in my hair now
But a leaf of Autumn’s musk.

My Rose Dies in the Night

My rose died in the night
And made it’s vase an urn.

May my passing have such impact,

I want the stars to burn.

Or is it not this, my wish, at all
But more upon my living?

As harrowed and as hot as day
 That night falls in my leaving.

The Thought of There

We fell into a chasm
 Lit with cayenne rays of sun
 Lain across the rock face
 As under water reeds might
 In the desolate blink of pools below.

 The dark archway of a falcon’s cry
 Skirting the Jurassic gap,
 And with not even a hint of order,
 Pebbles tag the cliff face
 All the way to the ground.

 As though some giant’s piano made of bone
 Wailed a trembling song
 Meant for nothing.

Ducky

A kitten drinks from a puddle.
The smell of porridge over a cold field fence.
I heard the rapture in your voice once;
Enough for me to stay forever.
The fern blade of my fairy self
Lets herself in the back way.
The elders sip black milk around
A tin fire and the kipper is stuck in the pot.
It’s funny how times passes,
We spin ice-skating rinks around sandcastles
All the way back to the cabbage plot
Where the white moth dances like the salmon,
Swimming for his birthplace if it be the death of him.

 

Benches Past

As we walk
We bless the trodden ghosts
Of benches past
And yearn in fervent lust
For once again.
I sit now where you were
With me when we first spoke aloud
Of truth
Of our truth.
Your plaited musk unweaving into mine
And unto dine together properly, not yet.
Of proper this and proper that, scat!
Onward I shall, in momentary rising,
Lilt on through sadly parted lights,
Thick with shadows as your hand
Still not in mine.