No-one knew what was
beneath the sediment
bubbling something
like old grief under skin
Moonraker’s booty perhaps
or rusting truths
now wrestling with reeds
like matadors in mud
like foot trodden fate
like drakes and strutting loons
all telling secrets too.
They fished and fiddle-shook
slid on pondweed toes and turned -
lost waterboatmen,
now scuttling home.
Wisened smirks in tan and spur
on drifting plains where gauchos ride
with measured words of old-world burr
in parchment air the cow-punch calls
to stars and satellites .
Weather shirks and tin men blur,
on nowhere trains in race to find
the long gone herd of ways that were,
descent no more than new-born’s fall
on drifting plains the gauchos ride.
Please, don’t switch your T.V on
tonight.
What a perfect lawn.
Bottle green nourished and sparkling
In the dawn like a King’s blanket,
Carefully thrown across the ground below.
It was here, she thought of him.
Here, where she let children loop their hearts,
Watched ambling lovers rest and sip red wine
Where nervous souls unwound the day
And owls embraced their quiet time.
This barefoot salve for tired steps
A million tiny hands that stroked,
That told of newness in the day
But always reminding her of him.
And she, amidst this memory,
so proud of tender green.
He’d just laid down.