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In the dark suburb where Daddy shouted We invented our own island. It floated between our beds. You were the fairy queen and I a fat man, Messenger to the outside world. We were alone, anchored in one imagination, Connected by a pact we understood, but never voiced. We scooped our island out of the night tide, It saved us from the shouts that flooded floor-boards, Unhinged doors, dug out holes. When it was time to go you sang a bell. Then sleep leaned over us, hauled up our island Into a net of spray and stars.
By the low shores of September shadows laze on sand and stone. Seagulls cry and I remember all the visions that have gone.
I am left a vagabond with nothing but a ragged sack of winter thoughts that whip and bind like the north wind on my back.
I must leave her ghost, my grief, the stony grave that makes no sound, to find an island of belief where I may lay my burden down.
When snowdrops gather in the woods at night and shiver in the winter wind by day they give the human heart another way
to be, yet they are delicate and slight and winter’s cold still takes our breath away. When snowdrops gather in the woods at night
their fragile petals turn the earth to light. And though snow flurries and the sky is grey we know that winter’s heart has turned away when snowdrops gather in the woods at night.
This meeting is like a secret garden whose sun is at an angle of blessing, whose flowers open to the yellow feet of honey bees, while our unwanted shadows float downriver, prosaic as newspapers.
This afternoon time dozes while the sun curls up in a ball behind the whistling blackbird tree. We change, become off beat, leaf-circled, dip our hands and toes in grass where gods dance in pink slippers.
We laugh and hold hands like small children until the sun uncurls and the whistling tree falls silent. Then nothing is left but fleet tender footprints skittering across grass, the precious litter of all singers and dancers.
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