Standing here at the window
Sometimes when the rain pours down
for days I am not here, I’m awash elsewhere,
somewhere with painful memories
and hopeless prospects and loneliness.
Then when the sun shines and I have a roster
of events and people to meet and things to do
it’s back to this world, a splendid place,
a place we should love every moment we’re in it.
But what is the intersection of these two conditions?
It’s me. Standing in front of two doors and two windows.
Sometimes one opens and sometimes the other.
I can’t decide which it will be. But I do decide
whether when the door opens I will go through, out
into the garden and into the car and the town,
or stay in. Sometimes best to look out the window
at the rain falling, the pond forming on the lawn?
There are two doors and two windows
and I’m not the one who opens them. Can
I accept the conjunction of options I don’t control,
that I am the hinge on which those two doors swing?
Health Is
Health is a world
where you get going early
anxious to see what happens next
reaching out for others
looking round at the scene
as if it were a miracle
Sickness is another place
where you can hardly bother
Spring starts out
but never gets there
You check supplies
but can’t see anything to want
Recovery is a prospect
where it seems worthwhile
to wash the dishes by the sink
to root round for a poem
And finding a shrivelled seed
you plant it
The Dream Story
Spirits attend our sleep sometimes.
Their infrequency impresses more
than repeated visits might.
Suddenly a friend from another time
is more shining in all the particulars of being
than might be clear in daylight.
You wonder then about the astral plane,
what it is and whether there’s a version
of reality in which The Other is more tangible.
You think of those stories you’ve heard
of meeting up with important ones
when you leave this life.
You think of attending spirits,
guardian angels sometimes visible
over your shoulder to those aware.
All rubbish, you think, though at times
of greater innocence they’ve seemed
more likely. When the dream
figures come they tell us innocence
has it right, the limits on our connections
aren’t so sure. The accuracy
of the other is possible,
beyond just memory or proximity.
Despite our days of dimness here,
obscure even in presence,
in another sphere we’re bright spirits,
our being not temporal, hidden,
temporary, but finely detailed,
complete and everywhere.
Sometimes when the rain pours down
for days I am not here, I’m awash elsewhere,
somewhere with painful memories
and hopeless prospects and loneliness.
Then when the sun shines and I have a roster
of events and people to meet and things to do
it’s back to this world, a splendid place,
a place we should love every moment we’re in it.
But what is the intersection of these two conditions?
It’s me. Standing in front of two doors and two windows.
Sometimes one opens and sometimes the other.
I can’t decide which it will be. But I do decide
whether when the door opens I will go through, out
into the garden and into the car and the town,
or stay in. Sometimes best to look out the window
at the rain falling, the pond forming on the lawn?
There are two doors and two windows
and I’m not the one who opens them. Can
I accept the conjunction of options I don’t control,
that I am the hinge on which those two doors swing?
Health Is
Health is a world
where you get going early
anxious to see what happens next
reaching out for others
looking round at the scene
as if it were a miracle
Sickness is another place
where you can hardly bother
Spring starts out
but never gets there
You check supplies
but can’t see anything to want
Recovery is a prospect
where it seems worthwhile
to wash the dishes by the sink
to root round for a poem
And finding a shrivelled seed
you plant it
The Dream Story
Spirits attend our sleep sometimes.
Their infrequency impresses more
than repeated visits might.
Suddenly a friend from another time
is more shining in all the particulars of being
than might be clear in daylight.
You wonder then about the astral plane,
what it is and whether there’s a version
of reality in which The Other is more tangible.
You think of those stories you’ve heard
of meeting up with important ones
when you leave this life.
You think of attending spirits,
guardian angels sometimes visible
over your shoulder to those aware.
All rubbish, you think, though at times
of greater innocence they’ve seemed
more likely. When the dream
figures come they tell us innocence
has it right, the limits on our connections
aren’t so sure. The accuracy
of the other is possible,
beyond just memory or proximity.
Despite our days of dimness here,
obscure even in presence,
in another sphere we’re bright spirits,
our being not temporal, hidden,
temporary, but finely detailed,
complete and everywhere.