It is quiet in the study, reflecting the quietness in the house. The muffled sounds of passing cars are a wrapper for the silence. Outside the rain is falling. Inside it is warm like the inside of a body. Warm and still. I can let the stillness fill me, it is weighty like glory, like the presence of God. I can feel its tremor, its quickening, its life.
Highly strung
The wind is skeeting the tired tide,
the slow surface of low waves,
blowing it away from shore
in fast running sheets like hidden shoals
escaping the shallowing land.
Above, it seizes a sycamore tree,
lookout on the cliffs,
ballooning in its branches,
sending wild signals
with its blowabout hair.
The swifts are racing it,
tossing their bodies high
before they swoop to find its sinew.
It shakes and sifts the banked bracken,
whistling through grass
and nettle feathers at its edge.
The wind is highly strung tonight,
whirling skirts and stamping feet,
shape-shifting the landscape
in random acts of passion.
Tethered
I am not chained to shore
but floating free on your surface,
tethered by your tide,
the sun licking my face,
the salt buoying me up
with the swell of your laughter.
I am a gull
hanging on your thermals,
high as a kite.
I am dissolving in you today
and will go which way
your wind blows.
I am clean with you,
stripped to bone and soul,
dripping with your delight.
You are so full
I might burst.
Lick me earthbound,
snuggle me soft as a puppy
asleep on your milk.
Threshold
The sunlight falls,
flickers off leaves and fronds
of fern,
weaves patterns in the hedgerows
that guard the garden,
tumbles and teases the edges of shade,
the glade alight with it,
hugging the watching trees
that are icons,
the grass between a prayer mat.
I sit and soak in the sun’s syrup
as I lose myself
in the soaring sky.
The place changes,
lifts off from the physical, visual
reality of suburban plot
to become a world charged with the glister
of new-born buds, of ants
scurrying in the dirt, of God;
the invisible vigour of life’s longing,
the surging push inside cells,
inside souls, tingles in the air
like incense.
Wet weather
The rain
has taken my garden,
folding it soft and wet
into grey arms
and closing me out.
I am marooned
in rooms and busy thoughts
while spring slips away
outside.
I can only view
from a window.
Cowslips and buttercups
shine yellow
while the grass
shoots strong and green,
revelling in its muddy puddles.
Even the scent of the clematis
hanging over the door
dilutes in wet air.
The garden is exercising its right
to be wild,
not bow to my desires
but soak itself
in the weather
and let its roots gather
the profusion it craves.