This is the blog form of the original composition. You may also read it as a list on one page.
-
A matter of choice? Instinct?
-
Does ‘mother’ leave first?
-
Her example, how to fly,
-
easy to follow
-
to shelter in junipers
-
among silver-green berries.
-
In 9 a.m. sun,
-
the adult, two juveniles
-
nest in a huddle.
-
At 10:00, the next scene: silent,
-
without audience. They’re gone.
-
Pose the question well.
-
If a tree falls in the wood,
-
and no one is there,
-
does that make a sound or not?
-
A philosopher’s puzzle.
-
The wings of three doves
-
would whistle in taking flight.
-
Were they frightened off?
-
Could young pinions lift them?
-
Did they fall if no one saw?
-
Lightning, a rainbow
-
in the same yardage of sky.
-
A sash of weathers
-
that warp the weaver’s pattern,
-
disguise the clothes of a storm.
-
She should have been warned:
-
one theft begets another.
-
How not to be caught?
-
Confidence, experience
-
cloaked her, blindfolded her eyes.
-
They met in a song.
-
Seduction, its melody
-
with rhythmic refrain,
-
overrode their histories,
-
stole for them an anthem: “we.”
-
For ten years, plus two,
-
that theft, remembered only
-
as an air to hum
-
till he no longer recalls
-
many words, some of the tune.
-
She should have been warned.
-
One theft begets another.
-
Memories like lace:
-
tatting, a pattern of holes,
-
shroud him, steal him from her.
-
What she needs from him:
-
she tells him, she shows him what.
-
He never asked her,
-
so doesn’t listen or hear.
-
Perhaps has forgotten how.
-
Memory, fleeting
-
or omnipresent, overlaid
-
with images from hell.
-
Fear, hate: skyline ghosts scrape heights,
-
imprint on eyes that still weep.
-
From her low deckchair
-
she sees only shoes and legs.
-
Plum painted toe-nails,
-
bronze sandals, hiking boots,
-
sneakers, heels, red ballet flats.
-
Trunks block her sight-lines;
-
a grove of stooped backs, straight spines
-
screen the stage from her.
-
She hears the addaggio,
-
sees a plane, white on sky blue.
-
Listens for her fears.
-
Their refrain cannot compete
-
with this assembly.
-
Minds, hearts tuned to melody,
-
as leaves turn toward the sun.
-
A dawn of anger
-
caught by juniper branches,
-
twisting and tossing.
-
Waves, wind in conspiracy.
-
To dream? Impossible now.
-
Guests at the table
-
no longer call to their gods.
-
Their prayers, secular,
-
presume a role at centre stage,
-
dream of ruling the cosmos.
-
Folly, such folly.
-
Like the emperor’s fine clothes,
-
less than gossamer:
-
their substance, significance —
-
ephemeral as a breath.
-
Water, gravity
-
in a taught conspiracy
-
with bedrock and shale:
-
distilled words, drawn down, down, down,
-
find their voices at the core.
-
Torrent or trickle?
-
Forging canyons in the mind,
-
following fissures,
-
impurities in the flow
-
filtered with each narrowing.
-
Is the way easy?
-
Does she, like water, follow
-
courses ready-made
-
where gravity enables