Saturday 25 May 2013

Speaking in Tongues


Can I forgive the youth in the park
who plucks out a rose for the laugh?
Well I never!

Can I forgive the mother who shouts at a child?
Well I never did!

Can I forgive a girl who leads-on a boy?
You don’t say!

Can I forgive a boy who leads-on a girl?

Shock, horror!

Can you forgive the surgeon who looks in the eyes
of the man in the bath with his burns
and the doctor, sighing, turns his head

not knowing the nurses had worked up some hope
and who turn on the man with a tongue-lash to re-kindle fire
into love, and then dress down the doc with their words?

Tuesday 21 May 2013

A moment


Stag foraging:
white forefeet
the work of
a master:

why would the hunter
creep through longer
grass to focus
your chest?

And where has the
doe gone, quartering
further back
in the green glen?

Until she wanders
out and touches
nose to soft nose
upwind

taking a chance
together and enticing
him back under cover
of high green shrubs.

The hunter’s finger stretches,
turns, determines now what
these two wastrels
will become.