Feeling

Your words run deeper now
and deeper still,
than that atlantic ocean i hold so dear in my cold hands;
chaos.

The tales you give to me are an unknown gift;
a skein of snowgeese on a lost and hidden winter morning.

This is stronger
than those metals that we share
from times long ago-
ancient words in unmeasured meter.

I am feeling my way in your world of candlelight;
creating shadow shows with your open hands.

saturn returns

remember the night we watched the earth moving around the dark space?
we talked of sacred places and saturn;
years that had so much more meaning
than either of us have ever been brave enough to admit.

you have a red squirrel in your garden
that must have come from those trees
that we climbed together
before you left.

every year when the autumn woke up from slumber
i saw your arms beneath me, in my dreams.

i am ready to be caught again.

Preparation

You hold sway in conversations
with the moon
on nights when Jupiter's star is the yellow
of the early autumn.

The first Sunday morning of October
and that first Hunter moon
inseparable in colour.

You are rugged as the Pentland Hills
in all their glory,
as distant as the first cuckoo of the Spring.

I place your words into a horn.
Bury them deep in the pure soil;
and eagerly await
the reply of the Cosmos.

courage

There was a time when the summer took a small boat
and sailed us to an ancient Isle.
You said your sea was deeper
than my ocean
and I called your bluff.
The morning stood back, patiently
as we sang to an old sea-shanty; out of tune.
I told you I was brave.
You played a pipe.
I cried.
And the oak trees
all around
shared tales
we didn't know.
I swam, fearlessly,
as the browns and yellows
swirled towards the beach.
I wish you'd been less chicken
and waited for the autumn and its music.

mull

one time there was a song about a salvation army marching band
and i remembered how you made me understand.

belief is a beautiful thing
and sacrifice is something that, when given, can never be taken away.
a red circle is colour and movement
and i will never forget
your patterns in the dead of night.
tea and hands across the kitchen table,
as the birds you kept
tried out their songs on one another
in the garden shed.

i have been on that island that he told you of
and they remember him there
in multi-coloured squares
beside his water.

venus

you are my band-stand
as i tie pastel coloured ribbons to a tambourine
that is not quite old enough.

sea birds are never green, unless the world turns
in a different way; sea foam.

i dreamed of a white rose in a canal
-you held a swan that is ancient and lives in a folk tale.

coincidences in black and white.

words in icelandic

I am the moment you wake from dreaming; chaos and lavender.
I am thunder that holds the clouds together, softly and out of tune.
I am the swallow on your chest; 5000 miles and counting.
I am Winter as he plays out his old sea shanty.
Who can hold my folk songs as I sleep?
I am that battered old Island; seaweed in colour; magic in form.
I am her sea birds as the waves dance clumsily;
melodies holding rhymes so ancient.
I want to come back here, again and again, with you.

Who can ever know the blues of our sky?