Timepieces

We’re the same age now, you and I.
Twenty seven years and three months
since your sea-worn watch fell silent; ticked

for the last time, busy hands stalled on a
still face. I glanced at the clock on the wall
earlier and thought about the one you made

so you could teach me the time; wooden,
sand-blasted face, elegant hands cradling
the carefully carved minutes.

You’ll be amused to know I’ve started
wearing a watch.  Time was always a
standing joke for us; you – always so punctual,

me – ‘late for my own funeral’.
I don’t worry about the day my watch will stop
but it’s comforting to know it’s still ticking.

 

 

Remnants

There’s morsels to be had you know;
it’s knowing where to look and find
the gifts that virtue leaves behind,

when light steps into dark,
when love departs and fondness

takes its place, there is no waste.

Lux

On a starless night,
no telescope to hand,
there you were,

a tiny speck of light
in a canopy of ink,
and now I find myself

wondering
‘What would it take
for you to cross the sky?’

The Navigator

You left much earlier than we expected,
the little boat slipping its moorings
and sailing on the noon tide.

Sorrow stood on the dock,
a small brass compass in its hand,
that we might find our way home in the dark.

Arianrhod

 

We walk at night my girl and I
and talk of life and love’s sweet ache,
beneath a silver dusted sky.
 

Half-summoned by the nightjar’s cry,
uncertain of which path to take,
we walk at night my girl and I,
 

unhook and take apart the lie,
unravel every dark mistake,
beneath a silver dusted sky.
 

Answers sought in every sigh,
curiosity’s thirst to slake,
we walk at night my girl and I,
 

discarding every alibi,
false promises we now forsake
beneath a silver dusted sky
 

Despite nocturnal lovers’ cry,
soft-sullen moon upon the lake,
we walk at night my girl and I
beneath a silver dusted sky.

Dru

 

Supper was a spicy affair;
cocooned in cardamom and chilli,
the newness of us flickering
against old stone walls.
 

The black dog slept,
woolly head on its master’s lap,
as Jack’s shape-shifting melodies
softened our edges.
 

Dusk danced at the door
as you led me outside,
draped your arm around my shoulders
and kissed me as the sky caught fire.

Fireflies

 

How strange that you are drawn,
again and again,
to our quick, bright flames;
our warmth, our spark,
flip-side to your dark.
 

Dull, brown moth, chasing the light,
damaged wings clutching
a small, glass jar
that contains only your fears
and your small parched heart.

Exorcism

​It has taken until now to begin;
for my throat to form the sounds,
my mouth to mimic
the shifting shapes of sorrow
and release them into the air.
 

I am an infant, grappling
with the birth of language;
each word connecting
and disconnecting me
to and from myself.
 

Love letters crawl from the
tar pit. Black, sticky,
coated with grief, they slip
beneath triangles that
no longer tessellate.
 

As the banshee leaves
all that remains in the
blonde light of morning
is a girl, so much stronger
than me before you.

Y Ddraig

I’ve looked at it from many angles,
this two-headed serpent that the Vikings
named ‘dragon’.
 

A thirty year gaze from my own quiet shores
and then briefly, lovingly,
from yours.
 

I turn it often in my hands;
some days a smooth, silver sadness,
others a jagged saw
 

that drags at my skin
as a sharp wind claws
at Dylan’s ‘slipping stones’.
 

I watch it now

from the safety of the West,
the sun sinking behind me,
 

and as the tide begins to fall
I realise that I have never seen it
from the sea.

Trickle

She runs a bath to break the silence,
watched only by a silver-framed
sullen moon.

They sit, at opposite ends
of a warm thought, until words
tumble into soft vanilla light.

Her back moulded to his chest,
he washes her hair, long fingers
untangling caffles.

Intimacy lifts the grey weight
of the day, her transient relief
trickling unseen.