Body Bag
We exist, you and I,
in body bags.
Stretchy, but a perfect fit.
And when we lie quietly, what do we feel?
Not an arm or a leg
But a buzz, an ache, an itch.
Try it.
And the rest?
Blank space.
Pricks of light in a dark city.
But choose a point in the numbness
and suddenly it will come alive:
The tip of your nose,
The heel of your hand.
Once unfelt, they now belong.
And you will be brought back to Earth
in the knowing.
Alone: Two Portraits
The old man awakens on a wintry morning.
He blinks, his eyelid rims cold when they meet.
His roughened feet scrape into slippers
and the air bumps him harshly as he moves through it.
Away from the warmth of the bed, it is
Unbearable.
Beyond the unclean window
he sees black ghoul leaves crackling in the windy branches
and the green low glow of sun.
Traffic passes by soothingly
leaving no trace but the soft fizz in his ears
of silence after sound.
The blank wall he faces also seems to fizz
when he stares at the air.
Like a swimmer at the edge of the cold sea,
he would rather not venture forth.
Rather not be battered by the day.
But he knows that if he stays, the inner crowds will
hound him, leaving no respite.
So he dresses carefully.
Too warmly, but wisely.
The shock of the outdoors is to be muted.
His head itches in the thick cap,
but if he takes it off
the wind will tug at his thinning hair.
There is no getting it right,
But he acquiesces.
He knows not to remove
every pebble in his shoe.
He walks the sliver of tilted earth between field and rushes
and as he does, the emptiness slips off.
Taken by the high grasses, taller than he
and the striped pale sky
and the carousel ride of clouds,
Expanding, dizzying,
Filling him with something greater
than before.
Poem for a New Year
A grey-green mist dampened my way
as I walked through winter’s sombre
But then, half-hidden by moist and burly oaks
with no such kin nearby,
Stood, like a timid yet wondrous child
A tiny, baby fir.
Its skittish trunk, its tousled needles morning-stretched.
Wide-eyed awake, with that softness that finds us all
before we arrive.
It was a gift that broke me apart.
For this new year, a dateless calendar
with only the word “Today” atop each page.
That will be my invitation to myself.
Ode to a Headache
I knew you would come today;
A too-short night, a too-hot run:
Invitations to you, my unwelcome friend.
This time, though, I will attend to you,
Not ignore or fight you.
My brow is a heavy shelf
laden with books.
My nape, usually so silent,
Speaks to me in groans and creaks.
My eyes are prickly pinched.
You have a length, a breadth.
I am reassured that there are places you cannot reach.
I observe you from without.
My experience is more than you.
I try to watch for your passing
but you slip away—an Irish goodbye.
Where will you go next, I wonder?
On Falling Asleep
My body becomes candle wax, melting into the sheets.
My bones slip inside me.
I sense them dropping deep into tissue.
My jaw releases, and again,
Unwilling to let go completely.
A city so luminous rises behind my eyes,
Daring them to stretch open while closed.
I see a ruby cathedral, windows alight.
Marble streets, not wet but seeming so.
Canals of clouds travelling so fast that the
trees rush by, their canopies flying.
Then the nonsense thoughts follow,
Insistent in their repetition until I
see them for what they are and watch them unfurl as smoke.
In their place come the final tugs of the body
Jerking as I fall off my mind’s bicycle or shuddering as I trip
on a pebble.
Half-dreams, they are. Not quite free
to take hold and submerge me into the
Vivid dramas of the night.
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