Frost
There was frost on the ground this morning
when first I woke
and was confronted by the day
Everywhere was clothed
in a layer of white
that clung to the fibres
of the earth
cloaking, suffocating
protecting
it was clean
and the grass shivered.
Then I slept again
and dreamt
And when I woke the frost was gone
Winter 2006/7
Almighty glow-worm
Almighty glow-worm,
I have seen soft trod
soles rippling grass on the hillside
and tank tracks
in the frozen mud filled
with sewage
Almighty glow-worm
I have seen bomb blasted
buildings like stacks of wafer
and all the while
the prayer song of
a hundred million minds abounds
Almighty glow-worm
I have felt time like spiders
claws on my shoulders, bristling
my neck
men moving mountains
in and out of market archways
and phantom housed cavities
of faces at every turn
I have seen a city
with death in its every step
and I have felt far from them
for they are nothing but walking
inevitabilities that shift themselves
around like sand in nothing
but an impression of what it is
to be alive, all mighty glow worm
I have seen above the walls
around my forest and I have
climbed up high in the cedars
and the story trees
and tasted the chill air
and there has been a wake in front
of me a gentle sea beast breathing
up and down
and I have walked out
across the hills to meet it,
across the humming grass,
but when I reached it
it was not there
and from the tress the loudspeakers
sang out one and a half thousand years
of nothing but an impression
of what it is
to be alive
Cairo? Early 2008
We came back
Then we came back
And it was as if we were never gone
We met up like lines on an etch-a sketch
and it flowed like a river
There were all the same old things
the same sounds and smells
and silences
it was like the whole thing had never happened
but I still find sand in my pockets
and in my eyes in the morning
you woke me
held me in your arms and
carried me through the darkness of the garden
swaddled me in the warmth
of the night-time sky
in the daylight places when they are
left to themselves
At first I wouldn’t come
but you picked me up and brothe
the dreams from my brow
lifted the midnight sack from my small face
and showed me
the sky torn apart
like orange peel,
like cracking paint
like icy puddles
behind it there were war colours
dawn colours
When we came back, like pieces of string.
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