Egg

Perfectly inert, outwardly
Hard I am
For how thin this armour is.
Eggshell vulnerable
One day myself
Will peck through.

Love is a long word

Call me to the campfire
When all sleep
And the great log in embers
Is a mirror of our love.
Know, as Buddhists do
Each flame
Never born nor dies the same
In dawn
We shall gather fuel.

Lion I would go with you
As we have through so many doorways
So many stairways and clouds
Tented heart a circus hidden
Just for us amid the crowds.

Those grounds we played
And shaped our thoughts
Those hallowed eaves
Where hopes were wrought
With talk uncorked
By hop and grape
Have been erased
Signs sallowed
And been replaced
All covered by the pace of change
But nothing is completely strange
When seen beside your eyes again.
Though the City's race makes brick but chalk
We share an archaeology
In the places and the streets we walk.

Walk with me
Unto the sea
Stand with me on sand once more
And let the waves lap at our toes
Then in a vessel let us go
Out beyond these balmy shores
Row together past the bay
To explore endless today.

So give us today
Words laughed over
After we have authored shopping lists
And unenunciated epics
Tailored favours worn implicit
And abandoned asking why
Our separate souls grow to arches
That hold a church roof high.

Give us then this promise
Vows for mouths of innocents
So that we too might smile
At the constants
Cast starlight
Into ink dark future
Sow our own conspiracy in sonar
Echo-locate in laughter
Values
And the outlines of tomorrow's you.

The bed weighs balanced
My other wing
Self-fulfilling Oracle
I trust this love
Like hot taps and light switches
My normal miracle.

Old friend

I met a saxophonist
Teeth like the old brass
She once blew
Dull, battered, dirty and lost.
Bewildered in well made rags
At the bus station
She begged

With time to spare
To listen and talk of nowhere
And where the roads lead
To walk local streets
And remind her of the tomorrows
She still has.

However long December runs
Some August dawns are yet to come
Of tomorrows planned when we were young
There will be some,
The simple ones.

I met a saxophonist
I gave her what change I had
She bought me a coffee.