One more dance,

one more dance

on the Bridal Beach

of broken glass.

Once more

into my small breached heart

the carnage of Dunkirk.

Once more the kiss

of never-enough

my love.

If you are the sailor

then I am the soldier

my legs unsteady from the voyage,

consulting the Oracle

who spoke against me

and failing to meditate.

I fought on this beach to live.

What could you do.

You blew on my wounds

You used your words

manfully

you kept dancing.

2. Night alchemy

I woke up with the word

permission,

spring.

Spring water,

that most naked drink.

And later sitting and stretching

and praying in a coffee shop

so up close

I have so much

much as our hands

our hearts

can hold,

we can’t always hold it.

Our eyes hold each other.

Spiralling out in vastness

then deeper and deeper

harder and harder

you tight in on me

becomes sex, becomes sleep.

There is no difference.

A spring in a rock

needs no permission.

3. And there’s the ocean

God doesn’t stand on ceremony.

Simmering away like beans

this world is too small 

for us

my darling.

Like oil.

My delicious friend,

we enter into God every day

like a lover

like a newborn

sometimes slowly

sometimes fast

sometimes fast

like a paper to flame

sometimes remembering

we have not,

and then.

Keep me for this moment.

Another little now.

Like smoke 

like wax

like steam –

looking up

God enters us,

overcome.

4. Past lives

It’s all coming back to me now:

I remember running,

you tearing me down in the woods

apprehending my scent

with your fingers and your tongue.

And I wanted to ask you this morning

what was it like to find the evidence of us on your thighs

the present a whole other country

compared to how we’ve lived?

5. The Swallow

I start listening, very quietly.

It hurts at times,

what I hear.

Wisest is she they say

who knows she does not know

but not knowing

makes me make up plausible stories,

peddling them, paddling:

I will drown if I do not make a sale.

At other times it is an ease

like unbending a stiff muscle

listening to God’s whisper

I open the wings that have been folded for years in the zoo.

Large Sparrow Hawk Steppe Buzzard Giant Condor

Is it that I am so close to happiness

I am actually in it,

and terrified?

Risk learning the truth;

make choices, the cards say.

You have been utterly defeated.

It is only the sunlight that comforts me.

And then there is the hiding.

I will not beat you for embarrassing me,

not any more.

Open, soft, feeling -

I am grateful even when I am not grateful

and for that,

I am grateful.

Love cannot be a Mastery.

When we finally take flight,

it must be a Rebellion.