D r e a m s

My new book.

Wild

                     they ate the Sabbath grain.

The women came,
one with her jar of nard.

In the leaves they breathe
of Galilee and Jerusalem
in tongues of flame
secretly

seeing though unseen
and knowing though unknown
of all things made and then unmade

like garments worn though never felt
next to the skin,
they travel time eternally.

Mother, daughter, sister, wife
scantly named

Maryam.

Star bright

Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen

 

 

How are you fallen from Heaven
brighter than the other stars?

A doll, an idol, made of alabaster,
hollowed eyes filled with lazuli

walking on the land among aeroliths,
the moon’s horns in your hair

into the purpling evening you descend
to light the mansion of love.

Moon

Peacock feathers

Swarm

Words swarm.
Symbols stream.

Ideoglyphs
do not abrade the air.

They patter in the thalamus,
patterned in the eye.

There's honey in the hive
smelling of summer.

My scalp shifts,
shines.

Brilliant light swarms
within the wax.

White

White sky. My
eyes are dusty
dry.  I wish I could
weep.  There's a
drought drawn-out. I
might have wept when my
father died. White
blood. His hair
white, he was white, I
wept at his funeral.  We all did.  Now I've
wept myself
dry.

Rain.
The plants drink. The leaves
flutter. My eyes dusty
dry and I'm
heavy as the rain-soaked
sky.

Pilgrim

I knew that man
standing at the station

in his broad-brimmed hat
and his priest's frock coat.

I wanted to kiss him
once

before he was a pilgrim
in this place

where I alit briefly
to see him

leave in the gleaming
train to who knows where.

Remember

Can I remember     the tuckshop roller-shutters,
                               orange and lime Tarax bottles,
                               the packaging of potato straws
                               branded in primaries?

Icy-poles etcetera in the dim shelter-shed?
I'd walk along the wooden spine
rising between long slatted benches,
one facing the dark back wall,
the other the vista of asphalt playground
bisected by a column.
Like a tightrope-walker I balanced
from end to end. (No one clapped.)

Can I remember    blue and white plaid
                              small squares, was there
                              a yellow thread?
                              White collar, buttons
                              down the front, an A-line,
                              socks and lace-ups?
                              (Mostly scuffed.)

The long-gone satchel's buckles and leather
leave barely a trace in my recall.

The Lakeland dozen lacked
a bright gold-green and a pink pencil.
Later I found then disposed of a set,
tin and all, with that landscape printed on metal
the twelve dryish sticks would never achieve.

I preferred oil pastels.  I learned to draw
copying grecian profiles from my book of Greek myth.
That book I've kept through the dust-jacket went
the way of all paper.

Glorious Aphrodite bribes the Apple of Discord from
the kneeling boy, wonder-struck Paris.
Athena pouts.
Achilles in a long dress clutches a darling sword.
Cassandra clamours in the doomed temple.
Circe scowls.
The bird-women wave.
Patient Penelope weaves her perpetual skein.

In that minute

on that morning
the Elizabethan Serenade
floated from the living room across the lawn
to where I sat
observing the hydrangea and the high
fingernail crescent moon
white in the blue sky.

Rainbows splayed from the sprinkler-hea
like  the spout-hole of a whale
surfacing to breathe.

Blue you

                  wear your blue
on the outside.
The light of the sky is blue.

Red for heat, a flame beats
in your fresh blood.

The dogs leap, yelp, a fog of noise.
They guzzle the meat left fallen

Your blue besmirched,
won't you change your veil?

Blue you
wear your blue on the inside.
The light of the soul is blue.