Honeymoon

The moon lapped sand all reflective of immense time, atomised particles of this n that, geological end state and nice between the toes, like the warm water, and you afraid to take off your swim-suit because that bright moon, relic of a space crash between planets, now dumb orbiting reflector rock shone so beaming bright as to stop night or turn it to a well lit stage set for wave frolics and you, a little coy now, afraid others up the beach might see us laughing honeymoons at them, water running off us all milky silver in that surprising bright light, a light you could read books in, books of advice perhaps for lovers transforming slowly in the waves into something steady as rocks but praying silently between whoops that the waves we’ll sail into won’t wear us down to powder, won’t sand us down, and saying if they do we’ll drift as dunes together and march up the land, squeeze between the trees and take over. Dunes move slower than moons you think as we plash back into ink waves and come up eyes full of stars all upside down and unhidden in this hemisphere and there’s warm water, warm laughing water of you, and then still, to watch the what’s that? horizon, where it’s squid boats we think lined up lantern lures, and more laughing naked now, and the how lucky feeling and it would take all night to choose the luckiest star all domed out piercing purple sky with dying light so turn and run then, faster than we can, mindful of the moon all her quiet push and pull at those waves, all her rhythms ellipses and elision, and no one up the beach can see, but smile to hear laughing lovers as the lanterns, bob, disperse then  disappear.

Arrival

This should be the end of my protracted youth

Where the drugs don’t work and my back hurts

And here’s the truth

This should be the start of my extended middle age

The settled end of rage

And my back hurts

But this is the start of the heart

Whose beating you can't rely on

Yes this is the place we prepared for

Like it or not

As soon as your snot

Has crisped in your mother's hands

You set off for this place

Only now you realise it’s not a race

But a sudden arrival at a place

You should have seen a mile off.

News

They’re dropping a desert here those winds

and no missing planes are found,

and the kids are in the park

or so I’ve heard, but I can’t go

to hold their hands or watch them tear

the dusty ground in pinching shoes.

and I’ve stopped watching the news,

because they never mention you,

nor do they ever help me see

the bits I can’t find in my reflection

the bits like you

And now with the TV off

the kettle on for benediction

and the milk running out

I wonder if the kids can hear me shout

above their laughing friends

But I hope they can’t

because this is not the way to go

it’s not the way we do it here;

to never see things through,

So I’ll see this through with you.

In the gap

There is a distance we leave between breath and word

Between breath and verse there is a distance

You pitched your tent there

Where in that distance I cooked up a book

A book you mistook for instructions

A book of maps, and curious odes

And illustrations of toads you took to be Darwin’s

Although it be know let it be known

They were mine those toads

Wrought of work, and fat of haunch

And deep did they squat, squat to be heard

In the distance

The distance between breath and word. 

Your fire engine

I remember you 
rattling down the hall

feet raised for speed,

tiny wheels turning fast 
your subtle play 

into something more,

an archetype perhaps; 

the child delighted,

but unique here with my joy too

seeing muscles hardening, 
pushing you inexorably up to 

this lofty complicated place;

the crash site of adulthood.

The trauma of growing,

like that of being born

is too much to remember

and better left in darkness,

but once all growing's done

and children come

the scorch marks of that crash

and a slow healing wound of the heart,

start something new

built of fear and love

like a soft but heavy beaten blow.

You're a big boy now

in that urgent emergent rush

to be done with all these

playful settled things

and I suppose I am 
the vanquished land of deposed kings.

Even as I wrestle your little limbs 

into the trunks they will become

I hope when you are me,

watching tiny wheels

produce ecstatic simple squeals,

that you will feel enough to know

there's one thing only a child's love can show;

we want our headlong rush 

into the emergency of life to slow
as we watch our small ones quickly grow.

First Breath

You breathe in waves

And the waves breathe too

As the moon shows her rhythms

So do you

The lunatics are out tonight

To dance on the crackling sand

I wake you up and take you there

Gently by the hand

And the waves take the beach

As the beach takes the trees

So I take you and you take me.

Somewhere in history

Another name is written down

A shape made in water

Atoms going round.