resumption

so many goodbyes I've said
and had to say
until the world was gone
and I was nothing but my husk
carried by the wind
over the cliff
almost
until I made the world
my own

I am that I am

By the Pond II

 

      So here I stand by the pond,
      Peer into the murky green
      Where my beloved ghosts live on.
      One love in every verse,
      And others go unsaid.

      May this crudeness be forgiven.

Monica
  Deep down at the bottom,
  The little coal-haired girl
  With sea-blue eyes
  Lived in my heart alone
  My made-up girl
  Made-up friend

Elisabeth
  Village mayor’s baby girl
  Her wild red hair stirs the waters
  As she rides her giant horse
  Across the depths of the pond

Monica actual
  On the first day of school
  She smithereened my blue glass gift
  And my minute soul
  To eye-coloured shards

Grit
  First long kisses from
  The ash-haired girl with her
  Bewildering scent of cedarwood.
  Asterix was better. I was eleven.

Gitti
  Strong and relentless
  Adolescent love and pain and love
  For half a decade we taught each other
  How to make our bodies sing.

Beate
  And then 3000 miles away,
  Proud and beautiful,
  She bore me a daughter
  I was young. Too young
  Too young,

The ephemeral poetess - Sónia
  Beauty and words
  Words and beauty
  Our bodies sang electric
  And then mutual betrayal.

But so, so much of the pond
  Is she, Inês, the world itself
  In a single woman.
  So much love given
  So much love taken
  I thank you with my tears
  And a broken-china heart for
  Our years, my years
  So, so much of my life
  I have become you

      So now I stand by the pond
      As my tears fall into the still
      Darkness of my pasts.
      And from among all these ghostly faces
      I try to untangle my own.
      But you YOU alone,
      Who now walks with me
      Stands with me
      Can see my real shape.

      Manuela.

      Hand in hand
      Head against head
      We sing the body and
      We sing the soul.

Come what may.

Manuela.

march relentless

rain rain not in Spain
and our house a boat
cast in mould
drifting across these depths
of darkest ash

until at last, as of today
the air has turned Atlantic for good
we’re subaquatic now:
you and I adrift
in our fog-coloured motorcar
cautiously pushing the headlights ahead
in a yellow bubble twenty feet across,
the world a mystery globe
of assumed wood sorrel and olive groves.
Platero: and us?

hello

 

and so time marches on
more kindly so than remorselessly
the mandatory years have passed
and I look both back and forward now
so much learned, so much to pass on
on this one and only river of life
so much love taken, so much love to give

but still: where did you go?
the freesias won't bud this year
under these pitch-black Atlantic rain clouds

wherever you are, and be it in our minds:
we're fine. life 2.0 is good to us

wish you could see us

love,

Fred

fisherman's friends

 

furious skytall Atlantic
rams grey into white into
white into grey
sky violence

the beach restaurant quivers rumbles
no customers but I
the world around us onslaught of
forty feet tall towering inferno
rushes straight at the window
across from my half-finished dish
of pan-fried fish
'coffee please', my voice kept steady.

and the tide keeps rising.
mint may, sweet’eart