Ragged Claws

And on the roofs now
cats and ghosts
of chimney sweeps
welcome the cold and the stars,
the soft fall wake of snow
and winter’s strong and intimate embrace.

New mornings
These are the mornings
that are wasted on the living:
when a new moon is slowly dying,
still vaguely above ground
but sinking surly into this pale start of day.
These are the moments
that the armies of the dead
wake to the trembling stops and starts
of bird song drowning in the roar
of early, hasteful traffic.
These are the mornings
of slowly forgetting
there [...]

Three years ago the car had come round the corner. Three years ago it had been a Wednesday afternoon. All the children had gone to the park; most of them with their parents, or in the company of friends. She had been at work though and her daughter, who was six years’ old at the [...]

(Hebrews; 13.2: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers. For thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”)
My stubborn coat
and almost rainproof
shoes and hair
have always made a welcome mat
for miracles and strangers,
Gods and drunkenness,
the dying screams of buttercups,
the slow and sensual moving
in and out of kittens’ claws -
and yes, indeed,
yes some of us
have entertained
angels unawares -
what better way [...]

Moist on fingers,
scent on tongue;
your muscles tightening,
all of me undone:
I could die now, love,
slowly dissolving in song.

In this wilderness
of dreams and hearts
my words become the rain
that falls on you,
caresses you -
moves through your hair
like fingernails and sighs,
waits on your lips
and coats your tongue,
clings to your flesh
and enters you
through every pore.
In this wilderness I dream of you
and pray for the words
to be flesh.

No reason to be faithful
to the veins that do not know you;
stupid to acknowledge time
that is not spent with you.
My whole life - if counted
in those units -
stops and starts
within, without your warmth.
I count my days in moments spent
against your skin -
my breath, your hair;
my love, your welcome touch.

Today I thought of dying
more than I had thoughts of her
but all in all
things weren’t all that bad:
she didn’t come
but then again
I am still here
to mourn the fact.

Thoughts of morning landings
on some distant beach:
armed to tears
and wearing some forbidding
castle for a skin,
expecting noise and bullets,
time to slow, and stop, and grow
and then the death
of strangers and a strangeness
closing down your breath -
and then discovering
the fear
that ruled your childhood
and this foreign, adult blood
is worthless as all veils,
forever sold as hindrances to love.

Between the lowered sky,
the stumps of time-worn rock
and stunted trees,
bats move like fistfights -
weaving, dipping, circling;
moving in and out amongst their prey.
Closer though: the feel of distant stars,
the grace and rags of loneliness,
a moving and a sudden slowness
giving birth to worlds -
and all the words that will not do
and yet must serve and come to [...]

The trees around the lake
rise and drop their branches (spilling snow)
listening and waiting for the footsteps of blind giants
and the cobweb cracking mirror noises
of the ice that groans, recovers -
a bit greyer now perhaps, a bit more ominous.
I tell you this; I tell this story
of clumsy yet gigantic ghosts,
a horde of dwarfs
and apoplectic princes,
duelling over [...]