In the beginning

To begin like this in darkness

with only the braille of the ribcage

offering up a map

to our surroundings --

it is small wonder

the night holds such panic

in its wide arms.

Listen, to bone,

ligament and cartilage,

delicate shell of ear,

long finger of spine,

their beginnings recorded only in

a doubling of heartbeats,

the ear's sonar recognizing sounds

it has never heard before,

the water filling

with fugitive thoughts

from other lifetimes.

In the hush between time present

and time past

death and life touch hands

and separate,

join again in a circle

of imagined forgetfulness.

But we will remember this space,

revisit it as often

as dream can carry us,

remember the buoyancy

of its salt water,

our dance to the beat

of a forgotten heartland.

We will remember

our swim towards the light,

feel again the right

and left ventricles of the heart

contracting in unison

with the primordial cry

of the beginning

of the first day.

Winter Blues

It is winter

and again we are numb with cold.

Inside a rime of ice

our hearts have become brittle and friable

with the weight of ghosts and sorrow

We are lost, in mittens, hats,

the absent tread of boots upon the stair,

in light so thin it is anorexic

with yearning to be elsewhere.

We breathe in slowed unison

with spruce and pine,

the speechlessness of poplar

which renders us inarticulate.

As winter moves between us

and illumination

we want to believe

that this eclipse of feeling

is a temporary aberration.

We want to believe earth will pause

in its gradual continental drift

long enough that we may find our bearings

or at least discover what bearing this may have

on the reasons for the shudder which moves

along ancient spinal fault lines.

We want --

but cannot finish the sentence.

We are mute:

language, our survival tool,

has fallen into disuse.

Wind searches for its voice

underneath the porch,

below the eaves,

but no one is listening.

No one hears owl shift

with each furtive sound in the underbrush;

no one hears the crack of heart

in each act

of letting go.

again winter

Think kindly of winter

which has written itself

into our bones,

carved our brittle edges

into something distinctly

northern.

In the middle of the heart

its blue flame

dies slowly into ache,

melts.

The Inuit have many words

for snow;

the one we have

encompasses them all,

inadequately.

Snow,

shorthand for degrees

and shapes of coldness.

From the deep north of dream,

the ears pick up wind-song,

the eyes withdraw

from an overabundance

of white on white.

The tongue drinks in

a thousand snowflakes

in a gulp.

We live on hope

and the belief

it can save us

from all ice-bound

starvations of the soul.

Winter (again)

It is March

and the sad blanket

of winter

cleaves to me,

promises warmth,

if I hold on

long enough.

But I am still,

stayed,

in a northern limbo

of darkness

which penetrates

the soul

in a rigorous test

not for the fainted

heart.

The body,

head down,

will make it through.

The soul,

the soul suffers

a lingering ennui.

Long after

the first melt,

an ancient chill

remains

deep in bone,

turns on a recalled axis

of despair.

I look and look

for the door

leading to

the light

The clearing

In my mind

a clearing:

come, visit it with me.

You need an invitation to enter,

and an act of faith

that no lasting harm will come,

though I cannot promise ease of passage.

The path towards it will enclose you,

as deep forest might;

even in summer the light is perpetually anorexic.

There is no sound

and the silence causes a yearning

you might recognize

but be unable to define.

The clearing can be difficult to find,

and in the sense that it is hidden,

when you find it, offers a form of grace

you thought was lost.

It has taken me almost a lifetime

to find a space I want to share,

so come, visit with me.

Come with empty hands

for there is enough here to fill you up

- or not --

and that is something you must prepare for --

a strange emptiness

as if you had suddenly been emptied out.

It is a passing sensation

and not to be feared.

But this is the point at which you must decide

if you wish to retrace your steps

to the entrance.

(I have done so many times)

If you leave, a rustle of leaves

will erase evidence of your temporary occupation,

reclaim any thoughts you left behind.

You won't remember

your hurried goodbye.

For a while

you may suffer a sense of having misplaced something

and if this should drive you to want to revisit,

the invitation will still be there.

All poems are about loss

the soft ear of dog

who lays her head on your pillow,

the better to hear your breath,

then slips soundlessly away

without waking you,

vibrations which enter

through the soles of your feet,

the way unseen tectonic plates

meet and part

in their search

for the same equilibrium

you yearn for,

the stillness

in the eye of the storm

before cyclonic anger looses itself

in a fury of discontent,

the transition

from before to after

which reminds you

there is no going back,

not even for your favourite blue sweater

which is so intimate

with the hollows of your body,

which comforts you like a second skin,

the absence of tonsils,

taken during your first dive

into oblivion,

the appendix you were told

had become anachronism,

lost,

all practice runs for the final act

of letting go.

Sub Version

Cognizant of the ecology,

she always attempted

the smallest footprint,

one which allowed her to move

unseen, unheard,

rippling in and out

of other people's lives

leaving no tsunami or even wave

to disturb the stillness.

Below the surface,

tectonic plates shrugged wide shoulders,

flexed neglected muscle,

felt magma bubble up,

a burning in the belly.

The quake, when it came,

rearranged continents.

Listening to Yo Yo Ma

his cello exploring a well of darkness,

echoing from walls of a cave of longing,

gathering gravity into itself,

mimicking grief.

I thought I could write loss out of me --

a redacted narrative.

thirty words or less,

an erasure poem

with fault lines expunged.

But words skipped across the surface

of my tongue, dissembled on my palate.

Nouns and verbs changed places

in an endless game of musical chairs.

I couldn't remember how to arrange letters

into something which meant:

the inadequacy of language a second death

until Bach burrowed into the abandoned space

the cello held low notes

long past the heart's unravelling

sighing into deep bone,

resting.

I thought words defined us as human,

but no, how then explain cello's speechless desire

to reach inside and massage the voiceless heart,

how then explain Keller,

grace in silence,

one body's intimate knowledge of another,

the wordless song they make?

These are the only languages

I know exist.

But if I could take a bow,

draw it gently across such strings,

those are the sounds I'd want to write.

Destination

in the distance

a whistle sounds,

and though it is still

a stop,

or two,

before my terminus,

I begin to gather

the detritus of my journey

and discard it,

bit by bit,

along the rail-bed.

rag-tag collections

of regret

tumble over and over

along the disappearing tracks

goodbye

dreams, alive

with longing,

follow the updraft

to oblivion

goodbye again

to words unsaid,

or said too late

and yes,

my load is lighter now;

I almost feel that I could fly.

good morning squirrel,

good morning wren,

I thought I'd never fly

like this again

but am I mourner?

or celebrant?

sometimes it makes me

want to cry,

these repeating rituals

of goodbye

1 ask a congress

of imagined gods:

am I the daft fool

dancing in the rain,

mistaking the tarnish

of burnished pain,

for the gleam of raindrops

in the lamplit dusk?

or am I one

among the blessed,

the singular, the misfit,

the odd one out

who keeps a foot in this world,

and one

in the next,

where I can see

the angels I was told

do not exist,

where I perceive,

more clearly now,

the urgent tasks

I've still to do.

Atropos, tell me,

will I find,

in this dimming altar-light,

the sacred and entrusted space

to leave behind,

the one our children need

to become

what they were always

meant to be?

is there a coda

you can tell,

or I can learn,

to ensure possibility

is sheltered

in the place

imagination lives

and thrives?

will I be able to ensure

safe harbour

in that other sacred space

where decency

now hides its face?

I hear the whistle wail again,

summoning me

back to the terminus

where I began,

holding firm

to one belief:

that in all desire

lives a yearning in the human heart

for epilogue,

an afterword

for every thing

that went before.

Sleepless

and waiting for rain, balanced

on tomorrow's edge,

burnished with years and

caught somewhere between

regret and longing.

In darkness, through a mind

prised open after a chiseling

away of winter's edge, a

train rattles along tracks in

my head, carries me back to

childhood haunts which

haunt me still, while the

growing crescendo of freight

cars peaks and recedes into

sub-texts of other passages.

Rain comes as a sigh.

Like tea, it is a soporific

for things hardly felt, or

felt too much,

its steady fall blends with

memory's night sounds, with the

chaos in my head, drowning out

thoughts which flap like moths

against a porch light, attracted to

the split-second rush of life

towards death, towards the

oblivion of sleep.

Let us forget

Let us forget with generosity

Those who cannot love us.

Pablo Neruda

And those who try and fail

and for whom generosity becomes

a stricture round the heart.

Let us no longer

rewrite old conversations

with lies to ease the wounds

of memory.

Let us cease to mourn at the graves

of misunderstanding.

Let our minds forget

what our hearts cannot,

and let us forget what might have been

had not wisdom come too late

or not at all.

Night expects us

Night expects us,

opens a door to take us in,

reminds us we are always welcome,

even when the landscape has become unfamiliar

and we feel our way forward

by touch,

as we did in an unremembered past,

counting each bone of the ribcage

to navigate our way

through darkness

and memory of how

to begin again,

of the way past and present

meet in a confluent of arrival

and departure,

how just breathing in,

and out,

must be enough,

how Eliot was right

about beginnings and endings,

and that what we stand on,

even in loss,

is anchored in a deep cathedral

of rock and magma

that will always support our weight.

The kingdom of me

no, let's call it

the persondom of me,

an unholy place, sometimes

bordering on the holy,

but always somewhere

to call home,

a space where it is possible

to be comfortable

in aloneness.

I cannot speak for

the persondom of you

or you,

though I wish I could;

I'm sure it is as fraught

and as wonderful

as my own,

and if I could steal

in your back door,

I'm sure I would find

a garden filled with roses,

and perhaps fields of lavender

stretching as far

as the eye can see.

or would your garden lean

more towards zen

a beauty of absence

which happens only when hearts

beat in accordance with

nature's sure intent?

Perhaps the moment I enter,

I would feel the holiness

of your garden,

and want to stay,

perhaps forever.

Is that what you fear,

that I might take up residence,

ask for accommodation?

Is that why you have never

invited me in?

Of course, if you did invite me,

I would bring parts of my persondom

to share.

You could teach me how

to perceive meaning

in your structured absences,

and if you allowed,

I could place an imagined rose

beside an absent stone.

I know these thoughts might be

worrying for you,

but can you imagine

the irresistible possibilities

in this sharing,

how different languages

could anoint the air

with a harmony of syllables?

Perhaps, as Frost intoned,

fences make good neighbbours,

and perhaps they do,

perhaps they bind us

to a singularity,

an immutable history

we've long embraced,

but perhaps too

our arms are wider

than we know

and we would discover,

on the other side of any fence,

a symmetry,

and, in spite of all imagined change,

a mirror image

of what we already know.

Could we recognize,

in each other's rituals,

echoes of our own?

Could you imagine,

your persondom and mine,

and all the others

together?

Could you imagine us

as friends?

Could you imagine us all

growing old together?

Reincarnation

In my reincarnated life I

want to be a bird

with wingspan wide enough to

outperform Icarus.

I want to set myself alight, and for

this purposeful miscalculation to be

another mythic plunge

to earth.

I want the pyrotechnic display of power

not accorded me in previous life. I want

everything to end the way it began,

with cymbals of clashing worlds, the

giant bang of new beginning.

I want,

for one moment

in this reincarnated life, to

be ancestor to the gods.

Ghosts

memory,

robust with new life,

harrows the heart

the way the tide

rushes in

silently and suddenly

you are drowning

in eternal recall

cleverly wrought myth

the stories

we tell ourselves

between your dream

and mine,

in the space

where breaths meet,

a gap

'the first time ever

I saw your face',

I thought,

but it no longer matters

what I thought

now

in the immutability

of remembered past

I gave, you gave,

we gave,

not enough

ghosts shudder

across the counterpane

of closed eyes,

their bodies a billowing

of washed linen

thoughts

you cannot

walk away from

between silence

and revelation

lifetimes,

cemeteries

of exhumed grief,

mined fields of regret

and love

waking brings the weight

of what we've lived

we weep for what

could not be saved

When you go into the woods

see how the trees bow

their heads, giving

permission to enter,

offering an unexpected

intimacy

bow in return, let

your hands rest

against your heart,

accept the imperative

even before you

understand it,

listen

as a breeze stirs

the leaves and

the air fills

with music that mimics the

undertones of loss

chords in D minor

did you know this is the saddest key,

that it can hold you, always, on the

edge of tears?

bow again to green darkness:

it now seems right to accept

its arms around you, to

accept they can hold you in

the thin space between life

and death until you learn to

breathe again, until you can

leave an old life

on its worn doorstep, and say,

and believe, that the past was

lived the only way you knew,

that nothing can, or will,

change it, that a choice to go

on is hard-wrought from a

center of just holding on, that

a new place can promise only

a newness of the path.

Waiting

Don't take the path

you've taken before,

the long road

where you are alone

hearing only the owl,

and the grass, whispering

its lonely night song

to the empty field,

your eyes shielded

against what you might see

from the long ago past

which keeps trying

to pull you down

to its own stunted size

which is not you,

even though there are times,

when you have trouble

seeing what we see,

that halo of brilliance,

glow of compassion

we all feel in your presence

and the hollow that's left

when you take the old path

and we can only wait

for your return

Panic attack

It is a bone lodged

in the throat,

breath caught on

sharp edges

and no one around

to perform

a Heimlich manoeuvre

as my body falls

with the weight of memory,

words swallowed,

heart beating an irregular

tattoo,

willing unconsciousness,

an end to pain and grief,

an inoculation

against recurring memory.

Tomorrow I will be

myself again

Do you always dream oranges?

Are they still part

of the dreams you dream

before dawn sections the night

from day?

Do you dream oranges

so bitter-sweet your eyes sting

with the opulence of their colour,

whose taste is an explosion

against the roof of your mouth,

probing the senses of tongue, lips,

satisfying the heart's need

to feel the sun

inside?

In this grey aftermath of love lost,

do you always dream oranges?