2019.3 Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows

She’s been told, over and over:
It’s easier to regret something you have done
Than something you haven’t.
She’s thinking, in particular, today,
Of the near misses.

The declarations of affection a breath away,
The errant gust tucked behind her teeth.
Likewise the cutting insult,
The coup de grâce to a parasitic union,
Forever spiralling on staircases.

She thinks of the last-minute turns
Not taken.
Country lanes still ravelled.
The road that’s more than familiar,
The route engrained in synapses,
Waking and sleeping, unrested,
Until all she can do is visit and
Revisit – shopping list of the
Undone accompanying the miles.

The house unbought, the home unmade,
Its neighbourhood now a maze of gentrification and
Soaring investment potential.
The hand untaken, the
Toe-tucked farewell,
Breaths pluming, backlit for all time in
Green, amber, red, beep, beep, beep…

She is thinking of the monuments unvisited
Today. She should be thinking of
Everything else. Everyone else.
She is thinking, instead, of skin untouched,
Lips untasted, breath unshared,
Knows how Too Late feels in the
Monthly crossing-off, the floodplain tedium.

She is thinking about the
“Actually”s unsung, clutched in her gullet:
Actually, don’t touch that
Actually, that’s not his name
Actually, that’s racist
Actually, she wants you to leave her alone
Actually, I want you to leave me alone
Actually, I want you to leave
Actually, I want you

She is thinking how close
Habit is to fear,
How she inhabits a groove laid out
By so many – too many –
Before her.
Whether or not this is her path,
She’s knee deep in other people’s
Straight and narrow.
It will take a miracle.
It will take a more than careless conflagration.

She finds herself hoping, for once,
The words spilling fresh from her lips,
Hearing them for the first time in years
Of repetition, no longer smooth.
Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Mundus tecum.
Benedicta tua. Benedicta tua.
Benedicta tua.


Fragments of this haunted me all evening. It’s been a funny sort of day.

2018.4 Druth

When I left, they let me.
No-one followed, And I
staff in hand made my own path
Sky-clean and stream-wandering.

I bordered on nothing, nodding
its feather-brush, touching and untouching.
I dark, it follow, wending and
unending. We peer freely, touch
with reverence, the grey is

And I

Forest is sky - the touch untouch
fronds against light and dark speaks.
It is more than maybe but
Not too soon.

If I, feathercloak fly it will be
Taken of taking, touch of untouching.
I gather. Cleave close to edges
Edges speak where the centre stays silent.
S   I   L   E   N   T   C   E      S   I   N   G

I prefer here that is not-there
Ivy shoulders; smoke skin,
Gather the edge dark in my hands
Wait patience as song for them to stop
feathering, gather my arms from mist
so I can eat.

I still eat, though its weight can be
bruising and nor of. Some of the
It’s very light, but quiet is dark so
edges of song drift feather bright

We were leaves once.

And we. We are featherdark light
And I am forgetting where my
old name talked.
It talked and talked, lode and loaded
the words hot and

Yet

Song.

Silencesong is feather soft, leaf edge
against me and we walk,
Darkness and I cry sometimes
Laugh sometimes, edge drift like
the smoke I remember
And quiet is still and I can hear
on the edge of breath

My other heart. A new hearth
For the silent song.

Bound no more. I am.

#22 Continuo

There are some well-known birthdays and celebrations going on today. I thought I'd commemorate someone else instead.

You probably didn't mean to be
But you are always Christmas.
I hear you and it is 1979,
My legs swing beneath my wicker
Dining chair and I jiggle
"Again! Please?!"

The virtually imaginary hero
Peers and swerves through pens and paper
But my ignorance is bliss,
Jinking in my pelting sled
To the chime of ice bells
Bedecking my fine steeds

I bank to the spray of bracing breeze,
Glee streaming from fingertips.
Glitter under moonlight.
Later yet, you guide us through
The anatomy of my abiding love
While my brother's namesake
Gambles a trade of wits
Against a desperate predator.
"Again! Please?!"

And now, with music flying
Light as a feather, I am hunched
Over the dark, heavy scent of compression,
Its precise placement
A tiny triumph of paternal approval.
Even today, where I can click
From desire to possession
In thirty-seven seconds,
The miracle doesn't stop.

Again please - more
Soaring and sinking in
Memory's waters,
Forty fumbling towards me,
I am twelve and seven and four
And you will be the one whose name
I recognise but can't remember,
Better known in a tumble of glass notes
And snow. Always snow.
Again, please. Once more.