So You Wanted To Go Back To The Forest?
Yes because my strings were loose and I was kicking over waste paper bins in the night sliding on colour magazines outside, a doll's head lay on the double yellow takeaways swallowed whole by darkened doorways soldiers watched on eyes white against camouflage face paint but in the forest the rain never fully reached the floor our mattress was a bed of pine needles shaped and warmed by our bodies crazed lattice work on our skin of a morning two days of feral other wildlife shuffled their cards in the undergrowth while our blood sang light aircraft engines faded in and out above the canopy
Crows
20.01.23 The funeral service done we pick our way towards The Plough. As crows, we wind across the park our wings armband tight against our sides I look back and witness the long line of us in the crisp January twilight leafless oaks against a dark blue sky and rising blood orange sunset. We arrive to O Luaidh (My Dearest Dear) played on the pipes. Coats, scarves and wings tongues begin to loosen language, thought and memory take flight migrate through time and place as water beads in whisky or prosecco bubbles rise and these wings beat in common rhythm. We rest for a while in the same tree.
The Oncoming Traffic
Jerk away from bad dreams, the ever unspooling glare, the electric halogen milk of oncoming traffic Full beams blind bulging eyes as heavy lids slip the car towards oncoming traffic Hushed by each passing wingbeat each damp breath every dipped crossbeam of oncoming traffic In the trees the yellow of a muntjac’’s eye is captured by oncoming traffic On the verge a wet clump of blue black bristles discarded by the oncoming traffic Feel the tidal pull across the white lines into oncoming traffic Safe in your capsule the strain eases in the dark gaps between bursts of oncoming traffic I’ll find you again eventually when I’m done with all this oncoming traffic
Flight of the dragonfly 