Contours

Birds hoarse and arrayed in distance echo
the misted recess of this valley’s morning -
resonant, like the pulp-thud and wobble
of my book: packed, clamped and patterned
with print. Pregnant like the hollow pock
and clatter of a box of chocolates
meltworthy-bitter in their scented card.
We, gloating, pour over legends
mouthing names like the thing itself -
scaled or contoured rich in lines
and all other codes of heaving surface.

Lightfall

Sleeping cocooned
in the night-white
northern softfall
follower of branch
and sill, your time
one small sunrise
ahead of mine.
Away from me
and our rains and
gust hustled weeks,
in your forest-dark
myths: sky-nurtured
eyes still laughing
and crying as
lakes of shadow
drain the clouds dry.
In silence - deaf
to my call perhaps -
tracks, scars, deep set
by heartfall words
and lightfall tears
lie filling with
snow. And walk on
now, as dawn thaws
my imprint of you.

Concert at the Barbican

Rivulet rounds of triumphal, orchestral sounds

swirling, leaving air thickened, weightless -

these players and callers of time and timbre, balancing

and nuancing the very grain of my ear-drone. Distance

becomes a kind of texture; movement softer, and

silent like the echo-surge of the hide and seek

children of my brain. A silken chafe of those

quiet things we swallowed too swiftly with talk.

In the bodied, fibrous hum of cellos arrayed against

the flatter crackle of the horns, I am calling to me

your messages and listening for my ways of reading -

stringing limp lines from a memory disembodied now:

All too delicate, they weave my themes in leaves

shaken and released by shadowed thoughts in unlit

rooms alone; rhymes to drape in lines half-hurled

to catch the light cast by this chorus-throne.

Quote

"Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise; risking more than others think is safe; dreaming more than others think is practical and expecting more than others think is possible."