hey, shush a minute

did you see that?

what?

here, look

come and LOOK

a raindrop on the end of a leaf

you can see the whole street upside down in it

lying

suspended

between

ancient hawthorn and beech

the slowedup humdown of midsummer

wraps me in audible activity

of tiny warmed bodies

or do I hear electromagnetic earth

contented cracklings

fields exchanging energies

plainchant of as yet undiscovered forces

above me glints and hints

of incessant dancing

wildly different beings

animating layers of tree universes

in simultaneous deep and now time

all these frequencies

infusing me

with hopeful light-green leaf-light

til bones become branches

this pair of red wellies

had a lifetime guarantee

but they outlived you

I am furious with them about it

lazy, still bright

they only had to keep

their promise for a couple of years

I keep looking at these

malevolent monsters of time

I can’t make sense of them

red wellies

aren’t sposed to be sad

I want to explain

about the thousands of thoughts

they have splashed in my throat

in the warm hush of a thousand bodies the vibrations of all my life so far and all it will be coalesce into one expanding moment which feels like the start and the end of a holiday or a school term all in one containing every achievement every loss adventure possibility emotion the full drama of being human in this world on a continuous sine wave swooping the lows to highs of existence without breaking sweet tension from the second it all goes quiet til as long as it takes for someone to speak the end of the spell after the music stops

what if I burst

breathe

(sometimes, go dramatically alone to music you love and take the long route home at the back of the bus)

at the park

my favourites are

the dogless

godless maybe

out without a lead

stomping or ambling

happily with themselves

daring to stop and stare at a tree

smiling, inhaling it all

not giving a shit in a tiny bag

what anyone thinks

unburdened

by the need for an excuse

to run through leaves

dewydamp, slack tongued and useless

to yelp into the air, collect sticks

and circle the long grass

as if it holds wild wonders

and then a dragonfly suddenly

is everything

settled on the top of a garden cane

finest filigree liquid sunlight

sprinkling through your wings

no, wings is too material

sprinkling through

your impossibles

what if I hadn’t opened my eyes just then

you might only be here for a week

and I got to hang out with you

from my deckchair

for a whole two thousand and sixteenth

of your existence

thank you

I have no idea what you/we do next

building, roar

the first time he stood in a city

it was to visit his brother

in a hospital the size of a mountain

a nurse directed him to what they said was

the garden

just a bench and three ferns

an unintentional space

with opaque windows, rusting fire escapes

dark brick walls squeezing on all sides

rising to a sour rectangle of sky

it took a few days to put his tongue

to the feeling of the sound because

he had never heard a building before

continuous ominous

rumble of industrial breath

unsettling, droning

longing for a regular rise and fall

an inhaling and exhaling of life

at night, without the background chatter of day

the building would roar terrible truths

later he surprised himself

moved to the city

took jobs in the bowels of large public buildings

maintaining their power plants

networks and air conditioning

where he would spend most of his days

with one ear pressed to the walls

quince

not apple

not pear

sharp yet distant scent

an incantation

of a fruiting from another time

a childhood in glass jars

jams and jellies savoured slowly

through the grey tail of Winter

til the last deep amber tang was gone

and with the first tiny tips of hope

sprouting on the tree

jars returned full of thanks

to an ancient neighbour over the wall

sometimes now he sits in his flat

hugged by the rhythms of falling rain

inhaling lingering traces

of pre-city life

waxed paper circles, inky handwriting

earthy heartfeels,  green mouthfeels

he hasn’t seen a quince tree for years

oh to preserve it all like that

aromatic memories

newspaper wrapped in old apple boxes

all the letters you wrote

carefully in biro

(the same pen that lay on the desk

from when I was small

to long after you were gone)

criss-crossed in gold

resting

on the small neat pad of writing paper

blank pages

and a lined insert

offering invisible order

at university, which I took for granted

and you longed for

a generation of women denied flight

I read each one

but I hadn’t grown enough

to show how much I loved them

your familiar curls of blue on the envelope

snippets of newspaper

tiny tales of home

decades later I sob it all out fresh

to think of how few I replied to

how my pages back could have lined your nest

what the fuck

for about half an hour today

the pain lifted and I didn’t feel

like my veins were forcing

fiery poison around my limbs

and my thoughts flowed light and clear as a dandelion head floating on

a glassfresh mountain stream

I remembered what it was like

such weightless happiness

I got some stuff done

wrote a poem

made lunch

without wanting

to throw the unfairness of it all

in the shape of a tomato

at the wall

dear universe, if I felt like this all the time

I’d be astonishing

I know it doesn’t work like that

but really, if the only thing your body regularly interrupts your day with is a sneeze

or to remind you to piss or to eat

listen to me, this is urgent

dance

(I have no business telling you this,

envy and despair as unsolicited advice)

but do you love being deep amongst trees or building things bigger than all of us

or just floating about as you please (because fuck no this isn’t about productivity it’s about pleasure)

if yes, but you can’t

I see you, I know

what the fuck is this

I feel you

furious

fiercely hoping

camera shy

back when scanners didn’t even exist

did you even like that anorak?

I start whitening a tooth

immediately embarrassed

by invading your privacy

removing your agency

if we’d known how close you were

to existing only in pixels

would we have spent more time

insisting we capture the perfect photograph

ask you to step left a bit, find a background

fit for an eternal life framed on a wall?

we might have turned your last few months

into a constant, terminal photo shoot

contrast

brightness

I can set your luminance to 100

you’d hate everything about this

my cello teacher once asked me

can you move your little toe independently?

like, why did they evolve

surely we’d be OK without these weirdos

just four is fine

she’d been thinking about this in the bath

easing her bones the day after she’d

slept the night in the police station

for protesting animal rights down at the port

with her mate, an old blues singer

they liked getting in the way

of those big three tier lorries of sheep

all squashed in

when she asked that, when I was about Grade 4

I thought she was the most interesting

and unexpected person I knew

sometimes, often, I’d come in for a lesson

and there would be a note on the door

Mrs Wilson is not here today

and I’d smile and know

she’d been arrested again

adjacent to anarchy, I would sit on my own

and play my favourite school cello

that was not permitted for loan

better than when anyone was listening

she once came into the bookshop

where I had a Saturday job

and surprised me with her pride

to see me behind the till

I wrapped up her book because it was Christmas

and she pushed the other one she’d just bought

and scribbled in

back over the counter to me, an unexpected gift

I didn’t much like the book but I kept it coz

it has her illegible handwriting on the flyleaf

later, I had to choose between music lessons

or a school trip to CERN

centre européenne pour la recherche nucléaire

we had just enough money

for one of those things, not both

I picked the particle physics because

I couldn’t stop running my bow

over the sound of all those words

the quarks and cloud chambers

I hope she didn’t mind, Mrs Wilson

such a pluck of guilt

how I admired her gut strings and spirit

but never said so, even when I got to Grade 5

she was one of the wise untamable ones

vibrating with what she knew, already ancient

I’d love to invite her for a cuppa now

we’d be friends but she’s too real

to be searchable on the internet

plus I’m sure she must by now be dead

I never became a cellist or a particle physicist

but I noticed today in the bath

that I can move my little toe on its own

running out

even on an alright day

do you ever sit on the Earth

and gently wonder

where all the air keeps coming from

if it’s about to run out in a minute?

just checking

is everyone totally fine

that we definitely know how it all works?

it is such night

the moon is away

eyes plunge utter deep

dark amplifies every breath

if you concentrate

on not looking

at where you know the orchard is

you will detect the apples

faintest greyest levitating orbs

neither reflecting nor emanating

what shall we call it?

        glancing just alongside to give them form

            like you do for the onlyjustvisible stars

                a tiny bird you don’t want to startle

                   or that word on the very tip of your brain

                       and only when you think about something else

it suddenly lands on your tongue

[the most sensitive cells live at the periphery of the eye]

you know how in dreams

if you look directly at a person you miss   

their face dissolves or morphs into something strange

[astronomers’ averted vision]

it’s OK I have learnt now

how to look away to be able to see you

lack of control

pilots must really have their shit together

all that sky to fly in

and yet they religiously stick to

very precise flight paths

I’d be flying all over the clouds

smiles streaming out of my eyes

this is the only (one of the) reason(s)

I can’t be a pilot

and possibly connected to

why no-one has ever asked

me to babysit their kids

or look after their pets

OK, a question

what if we could just even it up a bit

like, everyone rotates bodies

to share out

the genetic roulette

and biological complexities

for a set time each

and then we all get a go at doing the thing

we most want to do

like being an astronaut

for example

I do understand it’s complicated and not everyone wants to swap but

who is in charge of this please?

seasonal anxiety disorder

[ spring ] urge the leaves onto the trees

cheer the bright buds on like voguing queens

worry that they’re late arriving

that we’ll have less time amongst them

[ summer ] sing to the leaves and the sun

to stay high for as long as they can

leaflike I absorb every wavelength of heat

deep into my cells, stashed inside me

shimmering against the flattening grey of winter

[ autumn ] plead with the leaves

to hang on, I can’t bear it

we’ll ease into the jumpers and fires

but not so fast

they’re turning too soon

furiously calculating how many months

since the quickening

did I spend too little time appreciating them

being here?  I’m sorry leaves

please know I will miss you

[winter} whisper to the memory of leaves

to calmly hold all the colours with me

to be more tree, with silent knowing

that we’ll rotate back towards it all again

fiercely imagine the landscape into leaf

longing to be freshly astounded by the wind rustling soft green reassurance, if only

[always] I could end with the thought

that both the leaves and the not leaves

call me to be present

to be here now

but really, would you believe anyone

who said they’d mastered that

and anyhow with luck

we’ll go around again

and/and

we are nearing the end

and the dawn

of a new age

of and/and

grayscale understanding

hybrid states

where we allow

yes and no

to be true

at the same time

without pissing time away

on grotesque lies

or a binary punch up

soon we will breathe in

soft space

chimeric, complex

why are you so suspicious of new molecules

or the monkey with eagle wings

OK so maybe that doesn’t exist yet

and also one day

that monkey might just swoop in and save you

the world is a toddler

tugging at the hands of my soul

ready to play

the body is

this soul is

to wake up each morning into an unwell body

is to do the daily work of two people

the adult comforting the child

who didn’t get picked for the team

and the inconsolable child learning

too often the answer is no

just to be here with a glass of water

is enough

is astonishing

looking up at the meniscus

from underneath

is intimate

(I am mostly lying down

you should try it too)

rebirth yourself like

you’ve never seen water before

there is nothing in the glass

and then this thick metallic line

is it a layer

made of

it looks more solid

than the glass holding it

but then the feeling if I touch it is

can a god describe wetness

how is this

why don’t we all think about

water all the time

maybe there are

tiny flashing bubbles

but nothing to suggest that

if you tip it

a flood