Ay Oh, Let's Go

These two go together, one is set during the day, t'other at night.

Whose Garden Was This?

Resting like idle violin bows.
Birds in their dialects;
Keys of a typewriter, squeaking
Sneakers on polished wood,
Muted ruffling of blackbirds in unison.

Cirrus smudges like finger paintings
Roll like surf;
I lie stretched long in soft grass.
Listen to the code of magpies,
One from the aerial, two from the chimney stove.

Clench your feet on the prickling fuzz,
Leave behind foot prints,
Take home with you a gloss of loose blades
And remember the sun,
Lying on your belly on a towel on the grass.

Cat’s Eyes

My father’s cat had escaped on my watch.
Shortly before the midnight clock-chime
I laced up my trainers and switched on a torch,
Shuffling through darkness half-blind.

Sadly for Saffron, the night was all stars.
A sudden clear sky in an overcast summer
Had sharpened the glamour of the lights in the air,
Dusty grey grand-stars and the shooting white glimmer.

I thought about naming the cosmos like clouds:
“Three in a row, like a belt!” “Okay.”
Black canvas resistant to fathoming out,
A map without compass, no index, no key.

I remembered a book then: “On this tiny planet
Life was created; whether or not this delicate
Balance has been repeated, as yet
We do not know.” It seemed something like fate.

Thanks,
Dave.

Hi.

Whale Watching

A cargo of sightseers draws
sedately clear
of Bar Harbour, watercolour dawning
and gull-filled air

whips across the prow, drains
the flushed colour
from faces weighed haggardly down
by matted hair.

The flock of terns the lighthouse draws
in their silence clears
my mind enough to make it dawn
on astonished ears

that a mournful wail gently drowns
out the low-geared
thrumming engines; echoes and resounds
beneath us, where

the whale basks, singing. As if drawn
up by a clear-
minded artist who'd ordained
such unwary

carelessness, its cragged, drawn
forty-odd-foot glare
is half-dreaming, half-drowning
in air and water.

Thanks,
Dave.