Despite Andrew’s love,

it might seem boring
to recycle the same
nursery rhymes every day
in this order – Three Pigs, Three
Bears, Billy Goats Gruff, Jack and the Beanstalk;
a wolf, the porridge, the chair and the little bed,
the bridge and the troll and a repeatedly thudding axe

and when I’m asked
again, again, it’s hard
to keep it up - muster and talk
through the same old tale; until he eventually
gets a charmed look, away
and freshly lost in a dream
of significant story.

Hand me Down

I’m not joking when I say
a lock of hair from my great grandma’s
head was handed to me in a small
green box - when I was twelve;

cut off by her own mother’s finger and thumb,
stroked by my grandma
flushing cheeks, to see an
echo of herself and her mum.

One night, my dad took the lid off
and what I’d like to understand
is why I need a reminder, curling around,

twisted by an ancient strand of
hair that came out of her brain
for me to clutch, remember, time and again.

Ping Pong

I kid you not. I once was in the Utah
desert when a middle aged lady
looked at a skunk woofing her pizza,
not daring to stop it because of
the pong. A line of toothmarks shrunk her dinner
to a D, a half-zero, a part open tin,
like a button broken or a knob of lemon
bobbing about in a tonic and gin.

But that isn’t my motive here;
it’s more that, when the shaman suggested
we stay up all night guarding our circles
with fire and ritual to stop foxes and wolves,
the lady saw moons in the sky. Somber,
no alcohol, two moons, no kidding.