Everything’s brightly coloured for children:
plums taste of purple and language is light.
Recall how we played and laid on the grass,
all sappy with newness bursting through glass
and what if every day opens as May-day
blossoming buds on an evergreen tree;
child-like-ness fired in your brain, never pruned,
like an unfading flourish, radiant for now
- yes for now - but again and again.
Your uphill path isn’t haunted - even
baseball caps on hikers comfort you
until an unusualness
when something warm and bony
gets on my back, reaches and squeezes
my frightened wrist until
I let go,
alarmed, of my chocolate
bar and the skeleton creature whoops and
springs baboon
to the fallen sweet and grinningly turns,
devours in dust,
chirruping
and there’s horror
isn’t there?
when you panic
suddenly
gotten onto
from behind
by a grinning
gripping
carcass
silently
from behind
now isn’t there?
Darkness lifts although it’s winter
and we lob sticks into the river.
They’re drifting free encased in bark
and, as we walk, the river quickens.
Off they rush under branches, shoots,
until they slow in pools.
We walk away, extending feet,
bending knees, as these two float
together, trusting Tao, and God and Power,
Lady Luck.
he’s a drunk, symmetrically wailing,
an Am-Dram soloist missing a note,
he’s lashing it, belting it out for the Tempest
in Prospero’s coat.
Seldom polite but full of himself;
upstaging, rampaging, a gravity pull
and his mouth is more open that any old sorcerer
or Titanic’s hull.
But open your eyes, look out at a dawning;
into soft-belly forces, even a taste
of whale-song, tree-root, hyena laughing,
a heart in a race …
… and embrace.
Rattling in his bath, I hear my son chortle.
Squeals and giggles rarely
abound some days … (hear how my mind hurtles
to scarcity, stops me squarely)
but all sounds diminish and even his warm bath
is like a star, a splash,
exuberance, chuckle: he’s certainly having a laugh
before a full stop - then a dash.
