the verdant and the blue
stop,
and take a look from over my shoulder.
hold me close,
as you map the surface
and bear witness to my furthest geography.
the land that follows me
from high to below sea level.
as far as the crow flies
between the verdancy and blue.
my terrain on view,
my footprints found on every footpath and
detour.
where you can see my fingerprints
all over the fingertips of the headland.
down to the white tip of my nail,
a recurving spit that still defies the tides.
now bitten to the quick,
on ground that is no more stone than wet sand.
sea reveries
imagine
sinking beneath the surface wake,
and sleep awakening?
to be taken
below the quickening stream
where sentient flows migrate
and settle upon the invisible sediment.
swathed to the silt of the seabed,
cognizant.
visions wrested from the almost still.
distilled luminosity
moving the pensive dirt.
words unspoken
and just like that
i snap back
to that place beyond the perimeter.
where words run out
as they cross the periphery.
dropping to the ground,
collapsing their mass
right there right in front of me.
buckling their knees
whilst beseeching their worth,
offering me contemplation in the wet, sticky earth.
reasoning i have to choose
from many of their meanings
and claim me for their equivalent terms.
pleading with me to utter their name
and be part of their lexical territory.
you see, their rhetoric doesn’t speak to me,
and they will always fall short.
ill-defined, ill-equipped,
not cut out for such intimate thoughts.
so i remain tight-lipped, unmoved
as their voices die down.
bowing their heads in quiet enervation,
my silence again deaf
to all their pointless whispering.
Flight of the dragonfly 