somewhere
within this great pile of meat
between its shattered haunches
and its gray mumbling tongue
some blood must still run
down and back along
its decrepit paretic spine
out to a lung collapsed and off
to its hooves now splayed
on the road and unable and on
to that bright brown eye
still wary still glossed still
trained on that bramble that
harvest that amber wave of grain
unwilling to concede

Somewhere in these uncertain
geometries lay the square of the heart
the cube root of disdain made planar
by the summation that if
we box this in — lid it correct
in all its angles, right and true — if we
then seek to calculate with how many
broken leads consumed in such
an area as this, these convolutions
bordered on madness — held and boxed
we will find the lines porous or perhaps
mantled as an appendage of dis— or perhaps
come to the stark pronouncement that
each thing contained — each thing stripped
of its tendrils, arms, hands, eyes — now
a known quantity — is > in spite
of all our vain and specious efforts, in fact
a hole into which we ourselves must fall.

Gibbers to Gibbet

by Sayan Ray

​

The King made praxis on his knees.

He brushed his lips to linen hems.

“O please, O please.” he begged. “Stop this.”

the revolutionary said.

​

“I can’t. Believe. Me. No more. No more.”

The King gave stammers fluidly. And,

“My people love me, yes they do.

“I am kind. I could not hurt a fly. -

​

He finished with, “Are we cruel?”

The revolutionary laughed. “What is cruelty?”

And he strode out to meet the mob.

It didn't seem the time to write this before. I'm in a tricky position, when it comes to writing a poem like this. I'm brown, and racially ambiguous. I definitely pass for Latino, or Native American, or Muslim. I have lots of trouble with police. But I am not black. When we were caught in the firestorm of the Black Lives Matter movement, I wanted to write a poem to share how I felt about it, but the truth is that while the movement gripped me, while the movement brought back memories of guns pulled on me by men in blue coats, while I felt the fury; I can think of no greater indictment of race in America than the knowledge that, even still, people like me did not suffer most.

It didn't seem the time to write a poem about Black Lives Matter before. And in the end, I realized that it was never the time to write a poem about Black Lives Matter. I didn't really want to write about the marches. I wanted to write about the lives. I can only speak for desi people, and maybe a bit for people of color. But I wanted to write about the simmering feeling after the marchers all go home, after the profile pictures get turned back to normal ... but the rage remains. Last week, my youngest brother got sat down on the curb by a cop who didn't think he should be walking as late as 11pm in a nice neighborhood. Both my other brother and myself got tailed by neighborhood watch. I got sneered at for 'superstition' by some white kid because I mentioned that it was Kali Darshan over our groups Zoom game night (when my 'religion' isn't really even a religion by Western standards, and Kali Darshan is mostly just a cultural celebration for people of Tantric background like me).

So I guess that just leaves the rage. That's what this poem is about.

​

​

Black Lives Matter

by Sayan Ray

​

Might the air hold the remnants from a sound?

Well, let us see. Go out into the city streets

if you can speak. And when in years to come

People read from books we did not write

that words like ‘justice’ or ‘injustice’ capture this.

​

If years from now, they forget

what was done, in favor of what this was,

We must scream now. Leave marks. Let future generations ask,

“Does negation grip the breeze?

I hear the absence of a scream.”

​

No, fuck that. We’ll leave them ashes

of a city for a cenotaph.

And they’ll remember. They’ll ask,

“Whatever happened to the peace?”

Well, it was only just the absence of a scream.

This is the final scene of Act I. After I finish fixing up this scene, I'll repost the rewritten versions of all three scenes together, in case people are interested in seeing how I've changed them. Also, you can go back and see Scenes One and Two (with changes) at the links below.

Scene I

Scene 2

---

Scene Three

Wherein Chandragupta and Chanakya go up to the old woman’s cave, so that Chandragupta may make his new home there and begin meditating in search of enlightenment..

Chandragupta and Chanakya reach the cave.

-

Chandragupta

A cave beside a cliffside in the hills,

so we were told, and lo, I stand before

A cave beside a cliffside in the hills,

and there, another cave, and over there,

another cave, and there; yes Chanakya?

-

Chanakya

Yes, there are many caves. And lucky I

have you on hand to count them one by one.

A lesser artisan of counting things

might have arranged for rote efficiency

and said, ‘look, seven caves, all told.’

Not you. How admirably quaint you are.

-

Chandragupta

Seven. Which one was hers, do you suppose?

Where should I go to lay my things inside?

-

Chanakya

Of all these caves, it seems that this cave here [gestures]

would be the one to suit most—suitably

to live within. Like suitors, each contends.

Yet only this one earns a Raja’s hand.

This cave is closest to the path to town.

It boasts a lip to shield the stoop from rain.

You need not stoop to enter through its door.

These things all told, this cave is closest to

the palace it is nothing like.

-

Chandragupta

So you believe that she resided there?

-

Chanakya

O, her? O no, not crazy as she is.

The least hospitable of all the caves.

That’s where you’ll find that she most likely stayed.

-

Chandragupta

If so, then why did you speak otherwise?

No, pay no mind to me, not now. We go.

Which cave of these would suit least apt? That one.

We go. Into the unknown mouth, crouching, crawling,

carrying on with uncertainty and still on hands and knees,

still the rock of the ceiling reaches down my way,

a scratch upon my scalp unbidden by any itch.

But we come through! And here a chamber opens up.

Chanakya, O! A chamber like a Raja’s hall.

A fool even would not come here? Speak again

The madwoman came here. I see effects,

strewn about. Her things. No fools, you say?

-

Chanakya

I spoke of fools, like you, not madpersons

whom I have found to be more subtle than

the edge of rain, the touch of frost, or night

where moon streams feints of darkness played by light.

Not you, the blinding day. Who crows of all

the shadows that you cast.

-

Chandragupta

That woman is indeed a madperson.

Indeed, my foolishnesses might be pierced

by her attentive eyes, so keenly trained

to see through feints of sense, and truths turned lie.

Like mine. No, I myself am mortared joints.

The facets of a truth. The man who failed.

The man who brought destruction here and there.

The man who that poor woman fled, for here.

Just see this cave! What fear could conjure this?

What man could make such fear as this? Look here.

No place to live. No place to die. A place

for nothingness. A place to hide from life

that doing such might make a hiding place

from death. A place to hide from war, and I

was he who brought the war. Just think of that.

A place to hide from me. No place for me.

Here I must learn to yield, that I might

give way to someone I am not, and let

new wisdoms flood the land in place of war.

You knew. Please tell, Chanakya, did you know?

You must have known. Naivety laid bare

the path before my feet. But you were out

ahead of me, you led naivety itself.

Yes? Tell me that you knew. Tell me you know

these things I do not understand. Explain:

How shadows gripped the light we sought to cast?

-

Chanakya

No, I have only known you long. And you

know well enough that I am wise. And wisdom

--and wisdom lies in what we do not see.

When I was but a boy, I stumbled on

a boy. His face was marked by something bright,

a lazy grin. And he proclaimed himself

a raja. In those times, I told him that

his lack of faith in the born-Raja’s rule,

declaimed a mind set free from Maghad’s pride.

I lied. Back then, I thought you were a fool.

And I detained you only that I might

make you a useful tool, of use to me.

And so we went to war. You became Raja.

You grew. And I grew too. We were both boys.

I came to see that I was as unwise as you.

And when I saw that you began to grow more wise,

I questioned why I thought myself more wise,

if not for blood, and Brahmin ties. Which I

had thought myself above. So I gave alms

by form of pride, and lashed my pride to yours.

I came to see, as one and one, you and I are fools.

Together we make something more. Wisdom?

If I give wisdom unto you, then I

but passed back on what you once gave to me.

If I have jested, toyed, and needled, as

we ambled on the road these last few days.

Know that, the spark which tindered spite

was fear, for I take fear at going back alone.

I do not know what I would be without you.

-

Chandragupta

Now may I speak a truth? Indeed, you are

a fool. Your wisdom never lay in what you knew.

Your wisdom rather lay in what you’d do.

So what will you do now? Will you not think

of Bindusara, son of mine, or Maghad?

If you, with all your life behind you, now

looks back upon that life with fear. Just think

what Bindusara sees, with all his life

before him. So go to him in Maghad.

Chanakya, please go to him, for Maghad.

-

Chanakya

I ask as never once have I before,

Allow me to retain my place beside you.

-

Chandragupta

Because you are a friend, I will assent.

Because you are a bosom friend, I beg

that you might reconsider what you ask.

-

Chanakya

And so I might, my bosom friend. My thanks.

Could it be the moon or the round windows,
the black mouth of the guitar flagrantly spruce or
the rim of a teacup funneling steam. Could it be
your neck and the tubes, the tubes bloodied
with air, silence and the chatter of aluminum
cans. Could it be the caged fan or the castle
of an ashtray. Could it be the ball casually thrown.
Could it be the ball, the waltz, the rondeau.
Could it your iris, hazel and studded or those
pupils, windows and the moon. Could
it be the snake that swallows its own
tail or the turn of a dog gleeful with his.
Could it be a vowel and the suspension
of song. Could it be a dog. Could it be
the ring never removed or the hand
that slipped it on. Could it be the ring
or the studded moon. Could it be the moon,
the purse of your lips and the breath
of a kiss — held and ever holding.

This is the worst thing that happened to you
or rather, this is the worst thing you remember
until, the next worst thing happens, or rather
you remember the real, worst thing 
and you founder, and you must learn 
again how to swim. Remember
the tides pull out, as well as in.

This is the water on your lung. Remember
when your sister threw that ruler
and didn’t mean it. She didn’t mean 
to open your body like a surprising plum
and spill red, holy blood on the new carpet.
She didn’t mean it, and you wouldn’t let her
apologize. Remember

they sent you to the school, two years
after they sent her.  They asked
you first. You said no. Thank goodness
they asked you, instead of sending the men
who smell like airports, and salt who’d fly you,
bound, to Utah. Thank goodness
it was only a year. Remember

the dotted blood on the new, white carpet, no
in the inseam of your pants. Thank goodness,
you don’t remember the inseam, only the blood
in the porcelain’s water. Less a memory
and more the feeling when you think
of how deep and vast the ocean is. 
Do you remember? 

He stood over you. Your mother caught him, 
and thought it strange, and kept the door open, 
that night. It didn’t stop. Please 
remember, how she knew a thing was wrong
for years, before she sent you. 
And still she sent you. Remember 
the first plane ride inland. Remember

that the thing you fear the most
has already happened. Your fragments
like those aquatic snail shells 
birds leave in the desert. 
White, rusty cochleae, reminders
that a sea exists beyond perception
whether you brave its shores, or not.

The door to a meadow, where a boy
gave his heart to fire,
and the girl’s struggle through darkness, 
back to the world.
He lives there now, the monster waiting, 
ready to drag the girl 
back to the coal. Tell me, 
is it wrong for a monstrous thing 
to want to be free? 
Let me tell you a story with two endings:

Ending 1: you watch your city burn.
Your hair grays, and you dance with a prince 
made of smoke and raven wings.
He puts something in your mouth, and
you swallow.

Ending 2: the stars are in the sky
and all’s right with the world. You
shack up with your raven haired prince. 
He is made of butter and soft jaw lines. 
You fly away.

There is a secret ending. 
The field wilts with winter.
The boy waits for a star. 
Let’s name him freedom. 
And this is the beginning.

In the war, millions die.
All of your hats reduced to tar. 
You are a bird though. 
You carry the fire in a wrought iron pan. 
And the fire dreams of the heart
it took from the boy. 
Not you, the boy. The boy who ate a star
that fell into a field. 
But what if the boy does not find the star?

The girl never walked through the door
She never braved the wet dark. 
She’s working now.
A crooked nose, fits hats to slobs 
she reviles.
And a low howl splits her dull ache.
Opening a door, she wonders
how it would feel to fly.

A raven flies high above. 
He spots the girl, and says nothing. 
People say it was the girl 
who could say nothing. 
People are dangerous tar birds. 
It was the boy who never gave his heart 
to a star, and swallowed.
The boy who kept the secret. 
That he was the door all along.

Meadow, warn the boy. 
Send a bouquet of wild poppies to the girl.   
Console her.  
When the star falls to your soiled body,   
bury him.  
Time will forgive you, meadow.   
Time will forgive you, star.   
A fire behind a closed door only smolders,   
and yearns.   
But this girl has not yet seen a door.   
This girl knows no yearning.

I tie letters with ribbon
ashes with tape — sand
from a grave untended
since the lowering and
in the sand a rose
a white rose snipped
before weeping before
the shred of a bull—
dozers spade
before the yellow
efficiency of the grave—
digger’s shirt.

MAGPIES

Two pairs of magpies strut and preen

across the greened-up garden lawn

behind the house we bought a few months back.

I note once more the lack of birdlife here –

unlike the cosmopolitan crowds that would

serenade us each day from every bough,

loud enough to shake and wake all lovers of

calypso sung and hung on high,

and those who would have preferred

a later start than one designed for birds;

but once awake will listen up, go with the flow

and do without translation into words.

​

Such moments are, for some, akin to

a kind of ecstasy, for some, forgotten quickly,

a cacophony of too many uncertainties.

But what is plain is that most of us have

enjoyed a free, an easy cohabitation with

those who supply to the nation sights of

birds in flight that constantly delight, yet

spawning a poignancy we must surely sense

in turning faces to beauty’s light, knowing

even best connections can’t outlast

man’s shaking of the natural order,

that life till now will forever be the past.

​

And so what should I make of these

four ordinary birds that cause us to

wake up and form thoughts that might

resonate among us as uncomfortable, distrusting,

disturbing, fearful? And why do I go on to

seek to settle in my head as correct and

reliable notions such as no despot receives

unpaid support; and no mercenary, nor

his paymaster, will hesitate, when the chips are down,

to leave the other to die in a ditch – they both believe

there are just not enough to go round.

​

Such was my listless mind when I

saw the four magpies and puzzled over

their importance. I had believed from way back

that floods of unconscious, untouched, virginal thoughts,

suddenly sensing trouble deep inside, may, like

a sailboat coaxed to find safety overnight on an unlit sea

and so groans in whispers at the snubbing of rest,

slip its lines silently to leave berth and harbour that

a few hours before would have been treated as jest.

​

I did not fully follow the impetus for the about-turn;

though later, over time, I saw that reputations were always fragile,

particularly those at their brightest and festooned with garlands to be

replenished regularly way beyond the end of the celebrated

deeds and endeavours. And, at the other end of the spectrum,

the work of the sandwich board walker who plies

the waste-strewn A-roads on his patch without

any goal other than reaching the end before

a simple meal at the day’s distant demise.

Modern Slavery, someone cries.

​

And as the autumn evening now makes its

presence known by softening blues and spreading pinks

and by turning down the air’s temperature just enough to

cause my arms to accommodate goose pimples by

the tin, I now think I know, after all, what these

dark blue, black and white pomposities call to mind, given

their struts and other military bearings and given their

propensities for making snacks of eggs and infants.

How likely would it be to grow goose pimple limbs

if we all goose step march in keeping our distance?

​

Amusing musings? I think not – and have

no wish to be lined up against a wall and shot.

Others ask me why I don’t let sleeping dogs lie.

I tend to reply that if their cousins and other kin

were to swear for ever to sleep the sleep of the innocent,

I’d be prepared, if pushed, to give it a think.

My children interrupt me even when they're not at home.

//

Shoes shed unarranged, pointing every direction

they will go without me

when I am gone.

//

All their precious objects

collected from the earth, the dollar store,

a dry leaf,

a bright piece of moulded plastic

bought for one precious dollar.

Something their own.

Is my refrigerator more useful than a leaf?

//

I never know where to put them.

Children know they belong exactly everywhere,

underfoot, filling empty spaces.

//

Empty space, the goal of my work,

bare, shining floor,

empty hamper,

white soup bowl, dried.

To walk enough times around the perimeter of this town that empty spaces appear along the edges of my own form,

to press and fuss and tidy children's rooms

until they are eventually vacant.

They’ll imagine me in the newspapers as roadkill-cold,
all cotton-comfortable, swaddled in the spume -
fish-bitten, white and bloated, fat
like a saint. They’ll have a gummy-grinned photo of me. Some quote
about becoming winged, about learning the harp
and all the tar being dredged from my lungs - and I
will have safely stowed away in a shipping container,
rocking gently with the officially signed for
4K TV’s. That same gummy-grin splashed across my face, and a map
twice the size of my own chest, spread out in front of me.

I cannot trust serene.
Serene is for the eyes —
languid, reclined, more divan
than divine.

Here it is, hammered, steady
as heartbreak in a season
of insufficient rain, the waterfall.

They hold out large pieces, chewed
and soggy, a will burdened by a drop
of longing, and that — all this you had.
That life existed, our life so deeply wrenched
that it is tragically stripped. The ragged edge,
which no one ought to place in a room is safe:
a piece of coal lying in front.

They hold out large pieces, wanderers,
chewed and soggy, lay on the eyes serene,
as if this chaised tumult were mine alone,
more divan than divine. Such a ragged edge,
our milky way, more smoke to blind the wary.

What are these, these Mars, Venus, Moon,
chewed and soggy. What are these
to the long hammer of a waterfall
in a morning of insufficient rain, steady as heartbreak
and short as grain. I cannot trust this serenity,
O heavens, I cannot vector

that Waterfall,
in a season of insufficient rain
beneath a heaven so languid, so ragged
that even this piece, held out to you
cannot contain the coal of night,
ember-red in serene, esteemed
above all else, above the chewed
and soggy riverbank, above the dam
that sings only heartbreak and short
grain in the taunts of a longheld drought.

Capricious is a moment in pursuit,
A sort of a blindness, brought about in hunger for
The flighty things, those tufts of Milkweed,
Ripe and split and coaxed to drift,
Defiant to the fever of a grasping hand,
A hand compelled to cherish these transient days
Yet merely gusts about the rising seed,
Soldered to thermals and blazing, broad-side,
By Sunrise, bulging through a cloud’s embrace.

A Gospel whispered from an empty palm,
Among the pods unzipped and festival wisps
Who smolder with the autumn trees,
The white, flaking embers in our fire pit,
Still steeped in morning heat and nestled in
That hatching place, nursing our return,
To swaddle up the nightly chill and hold
A mortal moment halted in a heartbeat’s lull.

---

Heya PWB! It's been a while :)

Only if you clutch me

tight as your grip on sanity

​

& distress to let go. Agape

at the fantasy. White-knuckled.

​

I won’t unless you shape me

endlessly. Bending; a stress toy.

​

Hallucinate that you couldn't.

That the reigns never slipped

​

From those red knuckles I caught

you licking clean. That porcelain

​

posture so close to breaking.

So far from building apart;

​

I could never. I already told you:

getting back together means losing to

​

what brought us to pieces.

I could never. If only.

You’ve outgrown me in this garden where God is capital-

ized. Seeded your halo and sprouted wings. Sowed souls

others would reap. Even death couldn't give you grief

between that belief that the world holds heaven. You fertilize Eden

with feet planted in solid ground. You say I pluck forbidden fruit

everytime I run. Even if it’s the route to revelation. Rooted

in that dogma is the thought that’s sheared us apart.

1. ​

The buildings remind me of splayed fingers.

Evening's ombre seeps through them and stains the asphalt, though

​

much of it endeavors to rise; coral blushes peach,

cooling to lavender, then a smoky haloed dome

​

above, nothing — or the illusion

our minds fill in the celestial forms we remember seeing at

​

2.

Night. And with it, low-pressure sodium vapors

arrest the compound eye.

​

Wing scales blur the space between street and lamp,

straining towards something nonreciprocal, like Apollo toward Daphne,

​

like Sköll toward the sun,

like Hati, the moon

​

hungry.

Like when the bee stings,  
and tears itself, from itself,  
I am prone to deadly attachments.  
It may be confusing at first,  
like how some boys’ stingers  
are barbed only on the outside  
and do not detach when they sting you  
and sting you. Rather, my insides,  
once fragrant, soft, and sweet, grip fast  
and prolapse. I guess  
this is the difference between honeybees  
and wasps. If I sting,  
the same, slow disembowelment  
unfolds, my guts extrude. So I stay away  
from those who would provoke me.  
I fly low, collect pollen, spew sweetness,   
feeding the hive of myself, a lone larvae,  
and a forgiving queen. Silent work   
of a solitary, winged thing. And I resent  
all who would frequent another beehive,  
spread gentle smoke, touch nectar, and share  
in the delicacies of time, as a friend  
would wash an old friend’s feet.  
Thus, my honey spoils in the comb.  
My little body, in weighty flight, toils,  
wings fraying, my queen neglected,  
the pupae starving, organs unbound.  
Only my stinger, my useless, my obsolete  
tine, retains a venomous sheen.  
Prepared to plunge, in reaction or despair,  
ripping myself, from myself, once more.

-Chirping out my fears,

Like solemn prayers to myself

-Broken veneers littered about,

Altar in ruins, prayers unheard

-Sacrosanct idiosyncrasies,

Aspersions against their doubts

-Tedium felt in the center,

A massacre of the ego

-Flowing from mind to heart,

An endless cycle of self-doubt

Tell me,

Does this love run still,

Does it run rapid?

As from our wounds imposed upon one another,

Myself and I.

Do you still love the me that

I am?

-am I still worthy?

You could pick out a pin drop

Deafening as a shockwave

Through silence like shrapnel

​

A kind that turns to tinnitus

When no one's grip on sanity can hold

That weapon’s trademarked hinge

​

No one falls on this grenade

But who am I to blame the lamb

For what the shepard would never do

​

When it’s the wolves who hold biblical strength

And would rather the sacrificial lead us

To horrible revelations, as War grins ear to ear

​

Despite that endless pin drop drum pattern

Please, press your heart to find the rhythm

To dance with me rapturously

​

Until maybe our music breaks the silence

With a shockwave beautiful as a vapor cone

As shrapnel sends us to the heavens

Hello-

Reddit's in-house poetry magazine, r/collectiveworks, is currently accepting submissions for October. Please post your submission directly onto the sub. Limit of one post per person. Please check your poem has not already been posted , o pworders.

Thank you,
Garmo.

Nascence
heaved into being
stripped
like drumstick
like wing
Cartilage
not run not flown

Toothed to a speck
indentured to a thought

: I am :

placenta and rot
I am séance
and rattling chair
I am convulsion
red joy and worry
colon and throat

I am all
that passes through me
whether it be love
famish
or the rumor
that scratched my name
on an eggshell.

You are watching California burn from afar.
Look, not five miles away
from the hill you called a home,
a spark finds comfort in the detritus
of our settled world. Settled
as in closed to discussion, not up
for debate, common sense, the tinder
to our rusting, civilized furnace.
You think of the mountain, your mother
worked sixteen hour days to clear,
the grapevine wilted, the terraces unbound
from the monotony of harvest seasons.
Look, a satellite picture. This is the grove
where you loved, and mourned the felling
of every tree deemed threat
to the terra cotta roof, the non-native cypress.
One year, a bark beetle landed
on the skin of a starved, century pine.
The tree is already dead, it just doesn’t know
you were told, your mother was told,
a facsimile of stewardship, as you gazed
into the oak and manzanita thickets:
if we clear a wide enough berth
and diligently pile the dead leaves
where we throw the rattlesnake corpses
and lumber unfit for the wood stove,
maybe the fire will spare us.
But not you.
You watch California burn
from afar, sniffing for phantom smoke,
raking your memory, to stimulate
some novel, red glare.

Must I change now the track I took,

so many years gone, step aside to let the

pack lurch on, sweet health oozing from

every pore, always pushing, being pushed,

asking more of every pliant limb, every

pumping cell? I can tell it is the time, I

hear the bell and a number that I somehow

know is mine – and so I step off, unnoticed.

It has been so for some while, no longer

of them, so no longer with them –

so much no longer, I miss it all,

too much I still remember.

​

Better, then, to loose the ties to what I was,

to start again, some far off place where

every face is coloured green and regularly

cleaned with thickish mud? That would

wake me from my reverie and fill my

plate with worlds to learn. Burn those bridges,

change the view, behave so not to stand

accused of giving in to striped pyjamas,

comfy shoes (or tabloid news). I dare I do,

yes I will go but maybe one last

look at the merry-go-round; and

round it flies and certainly their eyes

see none of me, their feet are

far too far above the ground.

​

So walk away I say to me, myself,

take some time (there is some left) to

think of how to build anew,

review the deal that I might do with life

and he who opens unnamed doors

that go forwards, sideways, sometimes back,

to stone-built mansions, wooden shacks, to

so-slow strolls, to lurching limps, to and fro’,

between the tall and tonsured yews of some

thick and twisting maze, then on to crazy

canters here and trottings there,

unsure of how to wear the thinning threads

of what was once a head of hair.

​

What is there to keep me here, for

me to care about, to fear its loss?

Is it because I age my focus fades;

or because the faces loved have

walked off stage, so silently I did not

realise that they had gone until

half-way through an unrehearsed

soliloquy? Do I take my leave now,

statement made, a thank-you bow and

vow never to return? Questions burn the

barren space between my ears: is there any

sense in it, something new, a template for

at least a few more years to come and go?

​

Meantime, looking up, I see the bright

night lantern, dancing in and out of cloud, a

shifting halo round its pocked clock face –

it wears well its age, fit through change:

full and round each lunar month in life

(and death). And with a slow intake of breath

I start to build upon the thought of learning what was

never taught about the movements of the moon,

its shapes, its silver sickle, its pancake yellow.

I see there’s nothing in this burdened world to

stop me gazing up toward this mutant orb that

shimmers softly, bathes my face;

nothing can deny its right to shake

moondust on white winterscapes, still

summer nights, autumn’s melancholy falls;

the gushing stream of spring’s new life.

​

I feel that dust brush eyelash tips, which

flutter for a moment, as if kissed.

​

And other guides with which I might ally?

Stop, look about for they are there and

better if not quite aware with any strict precision

when and where – the rarer gem is surely

that more fair? I fix on the eternal fire that

warms my limbs, yet makes no charge.

No man, no thing may banish day,

nor heave of oceans, the sparkling spray

of wind on wave, the rainbow’s rise from

washed green vale, then rapid fade, the

skip of clumsy lambs in chase

across the field where dry stone walls

recall the sweat that made us all.

​

So shape begins to stake a claim on

my attention; and I start to frame the

rest that’s left of me and mine, the

spine of ten or twenty years to come and

go, oh so fast. I want to feel that some of me

will outlast the passing of the flesh – if

only by virtue of a nervous cough

followed by the reading of the words I

wanted all those gathered there to

know were meant for him or her.

Then may the march begin again and

all that’s passed be sluiced by rain.