The willow weeps near bedroom windows.  Bare.
The - at last - leafless branches, stripped
By crystalling North,
End in exponential curves to bisect a frozen axis.

But beyond, against the sky, though  seen
Through willow tears, there's that evergreen
We planted  twenty years ago: arms raised  in
Exuberance of immortal green - a shout and whoop
For nature's Winter fireworks 

There.

I have not eaten properly for weeks.

I have ignored the offerings of little things
In hesitations, turnings round to look again
At light, and waters, glances, steps and whispers.

Instead

I've trudged to no avail the barren flats.
Sought pretended safety among the many
Many in their repeating teeming empty worlds.

Almost believed in them. From time to time.

Then I cleared a space.
Saw the table of the day,
Looked up.

There.  The trees.
The blue sky through the trees.

So I guess you and I will die apart, then.

And would it make a difference if it
Were Not So?

From the train
I saw the moving buildings in the fog

They did not know.

I watched a man who had not looked at me
For all the time we spent together
Pick up a pen and write.
He showed a care for words
But not for me.
He was not for me

He did not know.


The lives we touched and made from passing blurs
- A friend defined and sharp in vouching care -
As hands can hold caress and make a face
To trust in eye to eye in day to day
For all the tumbling times to be.

That made a difference

We will know.

Oh that I could tower the words
Or send them powering underground
To feel the warmth of deeper worlds
And find the geologic power
Of you.

Then I should see and know your goodly earth
That concrete, brief and money serving prose
So slyly veils, betrays so sickly from me
Every day.

I want you in the coldly marbled glory of
A soaring place of awe for dreams -
A monument valley where the trivial has no place.
I want you in the moment of a glance -
A quiet corner of a room
Where plots for good
May hatch.


I want you in the tears and smiles
And curious nothings
Of all the many miles
To come.

'And do you think these words are meant for you?'
She nods and looks a moment far beyond the room.
'I think some may be - yes.  Not sure I want
To know'
'And how do you feel about that?'
'The words or the uncertainty?'
'Either. Both. You playing games with me?'
'Believe me - no.
But maybe words must be the only bridge
Between us now.'

She sighs. 'We go our ways, we play
Our roles and mime to expectations,
Others' and our own,  to puppet-please
Through low-lit trudging slabs of days.

But deeper common streams of time
May spring from separated human years,
Make symmetry of selves and find
A breathing river loving all our lost and found.

That we may always know.'

I watched you as a drop of water run
Liquid in this bony place of stanchions
Cases, bags and hardened faces.

For a time you lasted here
Shaken by bad tempered stampings
Waitings
Delays and
Endings.

Until at last
You fell.
And rose again
As cloudy light
Enchantment for a sky we cannot see.

A moment on a morning street in Town
That petalled day of doorways and dream-travellers
Staring at the unimagined light
Holding shabbed down crowns
And fading sceptres of themselves
Towards the day that also sheds
Its blankets. rising to the sky, the churches and
All breath,
All life.