Falling Light


Breath alone
cannot draw flame
from fragile kindling

desire
must also burn there

fires die
suck air hollow
convert solid matter
to delicate ash

rescue earth's fabric
from advancing years
encourage lustrous growth

slow damp return
of impudent shoots
on terraced hills

re-energised soil

a perfect auditorium
of flowers

light
confusion
loss

falling petals
dissolve
in question marks of times

healing or annihilation

blue fabric of
immense night blossoming
no longer

vast blue endless
black blue night

blue endless night

of dream explosions

render lethal blooms
glorious and open
petals folded out

to fall on a world of
waste in a wake
we cannot fulfil

fall there fall perfectly
land soft
be at this moment
incapable distraught
though fully articulate

I know this stranger
you are there
to greet its fanciful gaze

you are the words I shape
breath uttered as
illogical instruction
reminder in extremis

no part of this
us or we
they are multiples
against alone

such vibrant philosophy
takes umbrage at
world's neat denial of possibility

we are ending
it is none
the less endless as a series

O consequence and sequence
your language international
and eternal

those fires
burning in the twilight
warn and encouraging
simultaneously this dream
pure melt water

silt and superficial waste
delivered to ocean's leap

cascading as
complete symmetry

day's dark and latterly
new compound
each syllable
a word
to shape and nurture

though streets ring bereft
and loss
fills autumn's
resilient air

I see and sense
the me of you

the you of me
as silence waits
as walls
and propositions follow
pre-ordained
within a construct
of simple wishes

as silence proposes
its virtual confrontation
and the sound of waves

the sound of the sea
on the morning page

mist ribbons flowing
across the window
drops of moisture
gathered on a screen

I hear the accumulations
falling to leaves
the foliage and the pathways
in the ancient garden

shadows of sunlight
breaking through woodland

above Clock House Farm
half abandoned
to chickens

that roost on marginal boughs
falling and fluttering
squawking as we pass
to cut and collect lumber
with the crosscut
a two hander
balanced
synchronised and rhythmically
precise

moments before the first line
cast in bark
before words
assume significance

the first line on
and the swing
the teeth removing
moist pulp showers

the sound of the teeth
ripping bark and trunk
harmony of the unexpected

dream impossible
protagonist of simplicity
sweating in brown ferns
late afternoon
in our own way fade
because we are alive
to its possible advances

try not
try not to think
I am merciful
we are comfortable
as best can be
I am tiring
it is done
it is final
over and over for ever
and ever amen





night thirteen from twelve
twelve to thirteen
crossing the day
out and in


ten 2006
no magic numbers