To finally sleep
Is all my thinking needs.
A stone in the slowly
Unfurling
Ocean,
Insistent waves,
Incessant waves
Murmuring
Unseen.
But I am afraid
Of the
Deep,
Deep,
Deep.
Dark fish are there,
Gloomy, alone; they forget;
Through dank seaweed stare,
And by trawler nets
They are longing for home.
Yet how can I ever go home.
There are no stones left
To throw and there are
No oceans here,
Just the sounds
Of lawnmower motors
And dogs beserkly barking
At nothing at all.
This poem is a pebble
Or on the pebbled path
To homelessness, alone,
An unpolished stone
In the shape of
Inevitable loss,
Where barefoot ramblers
Wince and stumble
From discomfort rubbing
Against their soles,
Between camomile toes
And a heart of
Lemongrass.
Reminiscence aloft
From parabolic domes
On domiciles all tossed
Into an open ocean’s
Samphire-scented arms.
Someday, far in the future
These words will be unearthed
By a scientist’s assistant
Who later came to harm,
And where then will
A coast resurge, wild
Spume, renewed oaths,
Where will be their gardens
Beside the stony path.
This pebble is a poem
And in my hand, a gift;
Transient, impermanent,
Miracles are not
The genesis of men,
But germination,
That’s godliness,
Oak from a seed,
Galaxies from an atom,
A poem inside me,
The rest is axiomatic.
There are sixteen stones in my stomach,
A stone for each year since you died;
Downstream some others had reason recovered
And found the cobbled cairn inside.
Weighing me down, Tuesday’s a river
Where weekly discretely I drown,
Floating oak arbours have me delivered
Away from the city, away from the towns
Where jasmine grapples verbena,
There’s satin wallpaper from Guangzhou,
A river weaves through brown patinas
Where peonies and bamboo grow;
Beside the ducks and nide of pheasants
Sixteen stones on a shoreline found,
The tourists missed my stranded presence,
Preserved in glass, no waking sound.
Seven Hundred Jisei 