I stand by the sea again

I stand by the sea again

where there is no you or I,

nor them or us,

just the slow ebb and flow

that baptises.

Valentine

What is it that turns my head

or makes me smile

deep into the core of my being,

but you?

And the days have become months

and the months have become years

and still my heart glows at our meeting,

and my head is full of things to say;

and I watch whilst you open and unfold

layers of yourself -

and yes,

sometimes standing naked

and unashamed and trusting

and knowing that my gaze is for more

than just your surface

but for your being

even to its very core.

I woke up and I was here

I woke up and I was here

the daylight touching my eyes

gravity pulling my limbs

the in-breath

the out-breath

and around me the stirrings of spring

and the knowing of a landscape

that is kind and healing.

You stirred and busied yourself in the kitchen

and I let words run through my heart

like a stream dancing on stones

and felt the stones melt

and the heart beat

and the eddy and swirl

of a life lived

embrace me.

Prayers like rain

Prayers like rain falling down on the surface of an ocean of sorrows.

I walk down a street

I walk down a street
There is a deep hole in the pavement
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am hopeless
It isn't my fault

I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the pavement
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I'm in the same place
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the pavement
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get our immediately.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the pavement.
I walk around it.

I walk down another street.

You spoke of The Beach

You spoke of The Beach

and how now

the young

could not find

that isolation.

Text-gen I thought;

No matter where -

twenty-four seven

woven in their matrix:

no hiding place for solitude,

no escape into a fantasy,

lived for a while -

until its walls fall down.

And of my end of the hippy-trail -

sweet essence of Nepal

that fogged my mind;

brought by friends

who had scaled heights

rope and piton in hand;

I rose a little,

then plummeted -

broken minded.

You will have the sea

You will have the sea

in all her moods,

in morning weeds

and fiery sunset

and soft touching sand

or storm surf surge.

These are yours

to know

and to love.

We talked out the coffee shop

We talked out the coffee shop,

you and I and the others;

of being and losing,

and what we are,

and how we lost,

because of what we are,

and how,

being what we are,

the losing is what we did.

You,

playing the drama queen,

hurled yourself down

screaming -

“So you want to divorce me!”

at the feet of a man

you were not married to;

loosing what might have been,

because you did not dare

want it to be.

I,

being too small for myself,

left quietly in the night;

loosing what I could no longer be,

because I had lost wanting it to be.

And she,

because loosing what you love

is harder,

if that love is different;

and the losing is someone else's

not wanting it to be.

Our losses stood naked for a moment,

looking at each other -

and then we went our ways.

Whatever else this night

Whatever else this night

will be moments that

cannot be taken away,

cannot be lessened,

cannot be changed,

cannot be undone,

cannot be lost,

if we do but touch the memory

and know the truth

of each moment -

that is no more than itself;

but in that it was complete

in its everything.

Whatever else this night

will have been ours.

Min y ffordd

The wasteland that I found

was not just the wasteland of my hopes;

it laid bare the poverty of my bones

and sent yesterdays to haunt me

with hollow echoes of might-have-beens.

A stone sent rattling down a dry well:

a place where all tomorrows died.