Coalgate #1

I came reluctantly this time

Frugal

Not wanting to unnecessarily spend my energy on others

But here, I am unfolded 

By a quiet hum of something that is not quite joy

Bandaging me in peace

Deletion or All the Grace I can Muster

I want to take your life in my hands and
Scrub it clean of me

Erase my songs
Send back my poems
Do not even think of me

But, there is love
Although not between us
And that love-that-is-not-between-us
Compells me to stand very still
And do nothing at all.

The Monthly

What I long for is
A chest to lay my head on
Hands to hold
Arms to rest in

West Coast # 1

My bag is extra heavy today
Filled with stones.

I have come here
Where everything is perfectly in its place
And it has made me long for pieces of that belonging

I will take the pieces home and
Put them on the sill
On the shelves
By my bed

I will see them from time to time and think
I, too, belong.

I see another and add it to my bag.

Tauranga Bay, West Coast

Rocky hull of a ship

Upturned

Abandoned

Mired in the sea bed

Just off the coast

Hide and Seek

I write it down

Prayer

And draw lines around it

Prayer

Then I undraw the lines because

Prayer is not the thin thing I once thought

It is a big, wide, deep thing

An endless movement from many places

In, to one place

An open door between my heart and your heart

A trickle, a river, a flash flood

A quick dash for high ground

And a quiet wandering in a sunlit summer dusk

Prayer is an ache I carry in my heart

Wordless and deep

A waterfall making its inexorable way to you

An angry sea returning

Over and

Over 

To the constant shore

Prayer is a bird song

Quick and telling

From back behind me in the bush

A yellow flower floating on a millpond sea

A shell

A leaf

A seed pod

A word

An image

A blue light

Inside me,

It is the pull toward you that never lets me go

Prayer is me waiting for you

And you waiting for me