trees

Two Poems

Sillhouette

The sun makes silent
all the small planets
of inner orbits
and we only hear –
when they pass in front;

The stars have planets
which tug the belly
of their nuclear
mass explosion – soft
but more than enough;

In the lower tones,
of the dawn rise – there
the small star, has grace
for one still moment –
in the day soon lost;

The world compels us.
We are charred by void
when its emptiness
eclipses ours – but
soft glow the small stars.

Memory of Florida (Helplessness Blues)

What I used to be, and now
what I am, as we drive down
motorways through forest mass
listening closely with my voice
align like an eclipse moon
and the past blooms in present
rapture – I love this album

Old as I get, I will not
forget the forest drifting
drowsily past the window
this rain sifting tambourine –
and damp strung up on song lines
for this perfect alignment
in time and of void cultus

V.28

If you listen when the sun rise
continues over the woods, you
can hear them. In amongst the trees
whisper the ghosts of the dark elm

and around them flutter pulp texts
of appraisal and if you then
listen when the cashier rattles
the till drawer, taking payment

for a selection of old books
you can hear them. In amongst the
shelves the ghosts of poems about
elms slip and slide from page to page

and as the sun light cuts through leaves
and bluebottles mate, rattling along
thin old bits of rope, and old stones
once used to rip up grain for flour,

let reading not have been a strange
historical cul-de-sac, let
people lower their eyes, only
let the silence ramify out

so we can hear ghosts when they spin
suspended in the air like leaves
hung on invisible threads, leave
ghosts that hang on the page margins

In Which Things Move

The wind moves in the future
with soft wings – it brushes the leaves
hanging in the air with the trees

The clouds change:
a gradient of grey to blue-black
– and we too, walking beneath.

Our mouths open to let breath leave
while the red of your nails clatters
on the walls

The words spoken move
through the past, and your smile
leaves your face to land on my head

Three days later
it’s still there, folding and unfolding
like a butterfly, warming in the sun

I. 6×6, With Reference to Rain

A tree is falling down
somewhere, always – the bark
perhaps shed – no matter
whatever the state – all
trees fall at some time – or
decay takes them slowly

the point is – all that noise
all that lost feeling calls
out louder than grass growth
louder than the mushroom’s
creaking love of all life
ingesting – and bright plants

– they swarm in a dancing
wind and send small sermons
out from damp petals – out
in the clouded darkness
out in the beading rain
every single gold day.

There are arguments made –
witness the ant’s rebuke
to the flat earth’s respite
witness the air breathing
the whole flotilla in
and with a breath again

this shout of all star-fall.
Billion years refute still
longer still years – it’s mad
considering the dark
to look at this strong joy
at all this kerfuffle

A plane beams – a car moans
a shed settles – notice;
while all this can be changed
there is still the moment
when you unwrap a gift
hear the rain’s soft shuffling

Two Fragments

I –

The rain sets a gradient on greens –
old lithograph fade, with yellows
as if cloud, slate-dark depressed
is mindlessly flicking through filters.
Only at twilight, such a light.

After, the streetlamps, pale as soggy
worm corpses, settle on the streets.
I miss the phosphor orange glow
of the days when I was younger.
Today, I miss it. Maybe not tomorrow

II –

Pylons grew out of the flesh of the land.
Iron bones of blood-rust thrust through
scaffolds to hold up the sky – how
insufficient were the rocks, now
heaven had grown heavier and heavier –
only metal and electrics could halt it
as it dropped off hurtling downward
toward the cold earth’s plates