Beckenham

Today I watched a digger eat a church I knew and loved
When the last familiar piece was shattered, gone and dead
Even the digger hung its head

Shag Rock

Shag Rock is gone
And I will never look on it again.
Life size
Set against a burning sky
Tide playing, restless, at its feet.

Last time I looked on you
You did not say goodbye
Nor turn your face away
Nor give me any sign at all.

I was the one who looked away, too soon.

Sneak Up

The Mist and I have been playing
Sneak Up Granny.
Everytime I turn my back she creeps forward two steps
So that now I can't see the tops, can't see the heads, can't see the channel
Can't see much of anything at all
'Cept grey-green water and the feet of the hills dangling in it.

At St Marks

If I were to say that love trans-figured your faces,

It would be nothing but the truth.

That love wove itself around you a shelter

That love whispered the leaves and made the sun shine

That love itself has soaked into the very marrow of your bones

It would be nothing but the truth.

I will tell now that love weighed you,

Found all the cracks and filled them in.

That you feared love, but love did not fear you.

And at St Marks, in the crook of the river, under the watchful eye of the hills,

You found your courage and surrendered to it.

West Coast Beach

My happiness is sunning herself on the stones

Her clothes are too big

Her bones stick out awkwardly

She is picking up the pieces of her life

On here, another over there.

She is laying them on the table, piecing them together

She picks up the stones and puts them on her skin

Letting the warmth seep in.

On needing more time.

But actually, inside, it's still dark, if I were to be really honest. Raw and open and touchy as a wobbly tooth. Don't impinge on my darkness just yet.

Untitled.

Stumbling around in the semi-dark

Tense and worn

Can't find a dry spot to rest on

Can't find a shoulder to lean on.

Heathcote

River slide by me

Silently

Soothe me

Cool hand on fever

Untitled.

I come here among and between the tall trees
Leaf bound and light bound
Darkly perfect and tightly rooted in the cool ground

I make myself a hollow for my home
Finding I am not me less my grief
But there is room here for that too.