Birth Plaice

It’s only now I understand how

you gave birth to me twice.

Once,

in the salt shade of Osborne’s cockle sheds

Wheedling me out like a periwinkle while

your husband crammed battered fish

and chips between his  barbels.

And again, twelve years later
Your flesh become the mud of empty tides

This time pushing me far 

from the harbour of your thighs

‘It’s sink  or swim little shrimp.

Sink or swim.’

Migration

September.


Every day smells of losing you.


People drift like smoke through


Trees. Every day I see mothers,


Expectant, beautiful, babyful. Or


Mothers with boys who run ahead


But wait at kerbs. And


Every fledgling photo of you 


Releases memories to fall like leaves.

Empty Nest - Haiku

I re-arrange books


putting 'Mother' behind new


untitled volumes

Bone Dry

Seven years I've sat in this cave
watching the sky lift and fold.
Shucked shells where my eyes were blue
My lips, a fossil kiss. The desert wind
blown through the hollows of my bones.


I've survived the silence by eating 
my words. So do not ask me if I love;
I have nothing left to say. 
Just hold the husk of my hand in yours.
Pray for something good. 

My Arrow Boy

And though the tide returns each day


Its green notes singing to the sand


and though the sun shall rise each day


when I dream of an empty promise land


Maybe when you leave for the city of spires


I will come to understand 


the width and the wisdom of Kahlil's song


that Life longs for itself, and so must run. 

Stupid, Bastard

There's a girl, let's call her Stupid (not her real name). She believes in the soft fall of rain on English outdoor pools, and in words. She loves the truth of their perpendiculars, the punctuated full stop of their delivery.

And there's a boy, let's call him Bastard (not his real name). He believes in scraping scum from the ochre-fenced badlands and in words. He loves the whirligig of their arches and loops, how they dissolve into storybook dust.


Do not let them meet.
Do NOT let them meet


Do not let her love his administered heat, or him love the curves of her cool 


She will have to write her own ending. It will have no resolution. It will be an unfinished work of heart.

Summer Snow

I opened the door to a late summer snow

Cold recoil of my naked flesh. 

The sun was pale with frost, and a

white sky was falling on ripening fruit. 

Your outline on the garden bench, 

a photo of her in your hands. 

I walked toward, holding all 

my questions in begging bowls. 

You glanced, grief-eyed, 

a moment's meet, then stood 

and turned to go. I ran

to where my name was never called,

the proof of you already dusting over. 

I sat where you had sat, and waited 

for the snow to clothe my shame.