There’s an opening in the sky
bright like idea clouds over head
Watch out for tall trees
Watch out for wind in rain drenched leaves
Watch out for burdens
taking up too much of your waking time
Pull me close
Pull me over to the side of this road
when you’re speeding
I will pass you through
My green will slow your heart down
Who will I write my letters to now you’ve sailed away
Who will answer from the distance of your wandering footsteps keeping time
Who will play the melody to my songs when finally I sing again
Who will recollect the pictures when so few occupied spaces in your mind
Who will I believe you’d become over hardened years
Who will I invite for our reunion when will and courage align
Who was it I imagined could hold on to some thinning thread between
Who was it in the room to notice your slow graceless fall
Who was it you liked to call your only friend
Who was it called your number disconnected
Who was it arrived to knock at a pale door where life had fled
Who is it hears your song playing long and wan and deep in the after
Who is it captures your drawings in this wooden frame
Who is it plants white lilies on your lonesome grave
Who is it remembers the proper spelling of your name
Amid quiet crumbling beauty
we tread with light deliberate steps
watchful for what could happen
for some unexpected opening in this damp and fragile earth
into which we may fall
Here lies evidence of possibility
we see through our sunglass obscured eyes
all there is to see of what remains after abandonment and its aftermath
decay in slow motion
a death in silence
What will we have learned having come as witnesses
to imagine what was and then what has become juxtaposed
And can we say with conviction in our voices when we emerge
from this moist sinking landscape
to walk again on the even ground of modernity
that we understand
Who left first and who was the last to cross the bridge
Who won
How shiny was the prize?
Between grey waters
where heavy matters pass through
Our home on a ledge
There is a man without a face
I saw his portrait on a wall today
His hair is black and all in place
Don’t know his name
Don’t know his trade
Don’t know the reasons for his fate
I think a lot about him
Wonder how it feels to vanish with no trace
What it’s like to be a man without a face
Walking, I sometimes see
Objects sparkle
Objects calling to me
Yes, I know about desire
Danger danger verywhere
Still, conscious of potential
I stoop, I reach
I take a closer look
There are messages in odd places
Walking, I sometimes take
Slip a stone inside my pocket or
Prop a cap up on a bridge
Over this murky brook
For you to find sometime.
Writer philosophers birth idea volumes
defeat defiance despair existential disparity
Artists brushes soak in toxins
life cycle depiction or candid canvas prediction
Pleased to meet you, reality
Now it’s back to horses and dusty horse riders
Street battles wasting time
Stele entries forgotten or faded
No honoured heros names to add
Inspiration waits for the revival
Sipping tea in the wings
Photo tilts left
in the room of messy flowers
Light splashes shadows
these old silenced walls
Rest your head
for an evening
Lay it down, you wandering traveler
Everything yearned for lives
out of reach but still in sight
Boots on at dawn
Turning page, young seeker
Toss those maps over the ledge
Step one, you are ready
eyes bright with colour
Black and white was just a crack
drawing you in
Your beginning
I am far away now
from everything familiar
It’s after sundown, dark
The air smells of smoke
heavy from bamboo smouldering
Crickets are singing, or katydids
And something else
A woman’s voice rising out of the darkness
Over there near the fields
we rode bicycles past today
She sings
or keens
The melody is in a minor key but
I don’t understand the language
Perhaps it’s a lullaby
I am lying here in this hammock
a young attendant just brought by and hung for me
It’s in that army camouflage pattern
In the courtyard, I saw samples of bombs
grenades and land mines recovered from the landscape here
I am looking at my familiar from a distance
From another angle
This location in the world
I am reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
I read it before, a long time ago
It seemed like brilliant fantasy work then
Science Fiction, a Fantastic Tale
It doesn’t seem like fantasy now, this time
I’ve felt the breath of Possibility.
Have I changed so?
Or has the World changed?
Maybe I have been sleeping
Maybe I’m just waking up.
Look up, you said
sky is changing
Causeway deserted
signal bird calls
This way,
higher.
