Expansion

 Far out – nothing -

fancies everything

and (under the covers)

they fight each other

- spirit and form –

and then something is born.

Andrew's advice

 Remember you - your new friends -

like the ones you met

sitting doing nothing on a train

when you refused to let them light faces

with laptop screens – no – you waded

in with a few questions – ‘do you like

marmite?’ – for example - and let

them glisten themselves with light

of a new connection. Like a smile.

Remember you?

Birth

 Did you ever do the same

as Andrew on that Christmas morning?

Sit up in bed, mouth dry from sleep,

holding a forelock of hair,

looking and feeling, slow, long and deep

for an old inner recess – gap between worlds –

so hard to access, where pulse can be felt,

and gaze out, blast

a song by the (eighty year old)

Sondheim – loud, discordant,

‘Being Alive! Beeeeeing Arrrliiiive!’

and scan round the room

awake with that sound now – and now with a question

profoundly Socratic, imp

of a stoat newly woken in Winter,

‘What’s Next?’ he asks and looks with intent

to urge out his question ‘What’s Next!?”

Well – did you ever?

White Goddess

Three times she came to visit me,

three times she looked into my eyes;

maiden, mother, ancient lady

singing pretty lullabies

and, on the fourth, in starlight dance,

she howls one wolf into the skies;

leaps astride another branch

and flies.

In the quiet coach,

 a fellow sporting golden earplugs

with spaghetti down to a black snug

box the size of this packet

of playing cards in my jacket pocket,

- kings, queens, reds, blacks; faces and backs –

suddenly starts to sing ‘Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!’

in a screechingly smiley voice like a

backing singer – until I catch his eye

and grimace, turn to write a poem’s

smiling, silent speech – and hum.

2D or not 2D

 I dream of old an old man in a boater

sailing East to West across a page

and, when I turn the paper he still floats there,

a silhouette, a china man, serene.

I dream a rocket takes off into space-time,

climbs across the page from South to North;

black, these silhouettes, like paper puppets

long to turn their souls into 3D.

New Year

 Rainfall in the winter

hits a rooftop, grey,

- a momentary treasure

clattering crazy slate
but, hey,
it’s running to the centre

of wells inside the garden
glassy, level, cold
until a human grasps at
meniscus, aims to cup
it up,
swigging for their pleasure

but when the pleasure’s ended
and hands have wiped a mouth,
how far that person gazes
to east, west, north and south,
for truth
and seeking purer water.