for Rowan
Instead soften:
sun greys
buds rise
hard path
dissolves
baked mud
tomb breaks
small herbs
feather the way
roots threading
bike treads
blurring sins
other seasons’
rain calligraphy
history now
old gents
weep together
with no shame
here and now
only tsking
small birds
cock heads—
what do wrens
know anyway
rain’s not tears
things rhyme badly
this old year
wet days
go sit
instead fellow.
Might not know your blue
Know you have sky
Stipulate to your desert priest
Know you have storms
Your suffering dog-silent I admit
Like the girl sang it: you’re star.
Star stuff, no desperation
None available to matter
Nor kindness but a pinprick
Too bright to see alone.
A storm is best mended when it’s past
And if it takes the roof from your head
Listen for the signs in circling, groaning gale:
In the morning prepare to take advice.
Your sky is mine as well my dear,
It’s always there, a wide surprise
Stepping out of our limestone caves
With timing only sensible in the wash-up.
Exhalation once blood is now air
Once rust is now bird
Its colour as pertinent as mud’s
Its qualia holding aloft button quail.
Tear up this piece
The shape
Awful
The words
Erring
The time
Out of joint.
This is no thesis.
It is the usual ignorance.
That it seems so bleak when you reach the edge
And none of it was real
That the reasoning had nothing to do with the body’s
Or even the heart’s
When all the in-filled mysteries empty or empty again
And your habits can’t adjust to know what matters
The wonder of evolution and islands of complexity
Insufficient glory
After such light and grace and meaning.
I mouth a struggle to comprehend how it must be
For the billions who needed the prism while
Turning pages over or passing from room to room
Or whatever, yet
Closing or exiting it doesn’t work
Something of you doesn’t work:
Are we all dragged from this
While our loved ones have to watch
Probably never leaving book or house?
It must get better.
From clouds to earth
We fall in fear or enlightened alight
Clouds in the shape of wondrous fish
Land in the forms of wormy dirt
Or fish becoming other as we watch
And aureoled crimson
Dirt a city of nematode and root and wombat
And crowning blooms.
At last I will admit I am just like you
Never know time to stop
Dig into why bells ring
Step through how suns pierce us with radiance
Stagger across replication and transformation
Spots and rings and tide flickerings:
I am a sea cucumber on a plate
Unknowing what blade what decision
What ink
Gives surcease.
I have patched my trousers with duct tape
Without knowing where they were threadbare
Covering my arse in the daily
Stupid-go-round of happiness
And can admit
At last
I have uttered
A prayer.
I have whispered a prayer
I say a little prayer for you
I have called on my ignorance –
Whatever it takes really for who cannot?
Bully for whomever can not.
So tear up my love song
Bound to inadequate pulse
Serving not nearly verbs
Bulked up with foolish sentiment
Muddled argument
Each time failing what I know.
Again. No more. Again.
