A Stay More Exotic Than a Treehouse

An underwater nook, arcing

Glass and steel telemetry

A wetsuit about my ankles

But no tank to breathe the sea

I came with a flock of parrots

Where I expected to be alone

To hide and write and miss you

Stranded where the coral blows

Instead feathered cacophany

Around neck and wrists and feet

While the fishes flicker silent

Outside my enclosure, watching me

The weight of blue is astounding

And among the parrots I cannot speak

I sit and wait for this glass arbor

To surface from the deeps

–

Image by Julie Dillon

Castle Rabbit

You built a wooden castle

Where pool fell into pool

And the trees clambered into sanctuaries

Where no one could stay for long

I caught a black rabbit in those halls

A baby, nothing more

Than the length of my palm and delicate

Breaths through trembling fur

It had been on the doorstep

Of your haunt of wild cats

Of the hall of hawks and owls

Of your ego left ajar

And when I lost hold I did not wonder

Any longer how to leave

I made doors of your wooden castle

Until the trees lifted me free

Aging despite yourself

Find her in the heather downs

Bright noise of your school days

And lose her in the moors beyond

Once promises turn grey

On Earth

She laid her head upon my breast

And interrogated the concept

Of Infinity

Atoms nor stars had the right

As if they were born to show us our

Frailty and scant drops of eons’ seas

The least her mitochondria could do

Would be to marry her more deeply to

Mirrored lives unfolding, compact

If brief and imaginary

Because the stars and atoms’ stubbornness

Would never see them move, she said

We should dismiss them for stars made instead

On Earth, in Finity

Once more

An afternoon turns to honey

Warmest as it fades

The sun retreating from rooftops

Waited to see you again

In spite of

He came from one of the last

unwrapped spires

and smelled like nude chirality

like the nature we have shed

And he walked walls instead

of floors, and ate the air

instead of words

the barbarian we used to be

He did not look at me, but wore

every colour of the sky and more

around his neck

This, I think, is the only explanation

*

Image credit

 

Winter Heath

When better days have ridden

Ribbons of mist under the dawn

Receding to the hollows

Where the first seeds came from

We only lose ourselves in searching

For time’s wealth backward wound

But palliate in smaller comforts

That between snow and sun are found