LYING IN STATE

In the grey square of skylight

your sat profile is framed,

whether by falling moon

or motorway’s light pollution

I cannot say.

                   We are awake,

though between us silence

lies in that pause before

switching on the bedside lamp.

Yet not wholly quiet:

already whiny traffic growls,

elbows its way to work.

A cistern drips intermittent

after emptied bladders.

Later, broad day peers in

at my oversleeping.

Weighing its prospects

I roll into your warm mould,

a baking tray left cooling

when covers are thrown off.

Make-believe melts away,

there’s clatter down below:

the putting back of pans

as mordant breath of bacon rises,

steals upstairs.

                      My woken mind

is tip of an iceberg,

seven-eighths beneath the surface.

iii.2013

SCALING THE HEIGHTS

 

Sea-level. Our world at a right angle.

Train your view; find in four hundred

feet of whitened face, a black spread-eagle,

half-way from swell to sparse pine rim.

 

Toes and fingers stretch for fissures,

caress the geology, hopeful seek

from each nub, crevice, sill and spur

enough inconsistency to anchor.

 

In that speck of concentration -

to us no more than drop in the ocean

of better judgements - the wedged gravity

of mind complete unto itself.

 

Chalk bag and quickdraw, crimp and undercling:

I envy the nerve, would belay

between overhangs, traverse the crux of it,

to become as you wish to seem.

 

 ii. 2013

Skylight 47 #2, July 2013