Sanny Hunter feeds the birds

His shadow has mastered him
and light from yonder-by escaped
down avenues of years.

His stick does not crack
the lit bowl of bread for birds.

His eyes no longer scan
the line of comedy.

Sanny Hunter, now shadow-run
and light-theft, remaindered
as the sparrows wait.

Li Po’s exile doon the watter

Rivers in blossom,
the oak tree rising.
White bags appearing
to vanish under waves.
The bough-rocked hysteria,
the moon hung in blue sky
and fists of grass grabbing
the paths I walked.
When the river fades and flowers
a thousand times over,
I will be back and green and gold.
I will take your words
and croak them.



note: "doon the watter" - an old Scots phrase.

“It will look into your eyes”

A lifeline of knuckles
Waddles into the afternoon
Look into its eyes
It will look into your eyes
- S. Engels

Plainly in a drifting dark
with yellow eyes, in sepia
and a red-stone rubble
crushed beneath its feet –
it will look into your eyes
and you will stone under them
you will ice under them.
It will look, and will laugh,
plainly lit by candles
with eyes a chain
linked to all others
and a ceiling distant
as the stones beneath you.

Lochlyn, thief of the potted geranium

From theft from me comes theft from you.
And the wheel turns.
The curve lifts through its point of inflection
and that crime of yours is handed on to me.
You steal, I steal and the wheel turns
always faster on my vehicle –
my speed is more than your speed,
your crime more than mine.

And the wheel breaks with irregularities.

Nethan Gorge Lullaby

Reaching up he grabbed the Moon
and chopped the awkward grasses down
with the sickle of its lunar edge.

Then shackling the Milky Way
to his car of mountains he drove away
and made a wish on stars reflected

in an ocean still with arctic breath
and ice with twice the rate of death.
He turned away and asked and urged

the forest down into his bag.
He gave a sigh and frowned as deep
as the Nethan Gorge, then went to sleep.

Faces

Compared to jigsaws? Check.
Compared to a heart? Likewise.
Compared to mountains, mirrors,
compared to masks?
Check, check and ditto.
And compared to stairways?
As always, as ever, ticked off.

All faces compare to everything
each contains the other in itself.

And all points map one-to-many
mapping all to all places
mapping mountain to moon
and mapping glint of eye to sun.

8 points on “The Perfect Lover”

i
She thaws
the awkward;
freezes the moment.

ii
She claws
at the bedpost
and smoothes the face.

iii
Her pause
is like a knife
drawing tattoos on the back.

iv
Her jaws
move in time and space
and rhythm and place.

v
She saws
at the log of memory
and leaves it as two.

vi
Her laws
are labyrinthine,
an inscrutable knot of limbs.

vii
Her flaws
scatter light superficially
and gather together as features.

viii
And she just rhymes.
Nothing more.
She just rhymes away.