Yesterday there was snow

I have a poem to show you! And another one that will come either tomorrow or Monday, depending on when I next get to a computer. Neither of them have titles yet.


She is watching for you from the tree-house.
Judging by the tulip-blackness of the sky,
the corona of moonlight, you are late.
The ginseng root in your hand has come alive,
and when you touch the tree with your other hand,
too patched and grubby to live, and all this
luminous scrub, these overdone set-props
seem too flat, too farfetched, will you filter

back to life where her snoring fills the morning
as if she's angry to have missed it,
and all things seem connected to that
one abrasive sound that breaks from dream,
because air would no sooner meet your lungs and leave
and not believe your body something sacred

than you would stop her goddamn snoring.
How can desire live in what's perfected? Root
yourself in the pillow, the wet jewels of her sweat,
when there is nothing between you
but the bundles and nooks
of the blankets and a little human sleep.


Thanks for your patience, it's been a while.
Dave.

Sea Legs

Writing poetry is fun partly because of the way it gets round to what it's "really" about. I'm writing about an empty house but I'm talking about say isolation or exile or what have you. So it lends itself well to insular kinda folks. But it also indulges that insularity, which is not only generally intolerable but leads to shitty poems. Poetry is written primarily for other people.
This poem is part of an exchange with the Edinburgh College of Art, and is based (loosely) on the picture above, by Toby Cook.

Sea Legs

Maybe that’s all that there is.
Maybe he runs through the streets
along roads over bridges on railway
lines that fly over sleeping cathedral
towns lit up blue green like swamp
mushrooms tra-la like coral like Christmas tree
lights like the Forth Road Bridge a frame
over night-bound trawlers young man finding
his sea legs tra-la cutting shadows
in the sky far beneath the feet of a man
on the moon-blackened bridge
regarding all that there is.

Thanks,
Dave.