issue three, summer

We are grass-footed.

My friends and I have left sadness behind us

crying in the dark branches.

Ahead of us is a field in which

we turn wide circles with our faces.

We are so happy to be here.

Now we are going to learn how

the moon’s children

stand up

without breaking any shadows.

In the field we have buried bottles

filled with our hair.

We want to feel safe

so sometimes we just listen.

It’s a fact
that every family has an aunt
with her fingers
crossed
behind her back.

She will (probably) inhabit the following
(filling up every corner and fold)

             1. A house by the sea.
             With more sea in than out.

             2. Tent like dresses.
             That let her feet become acrobats
             dangling from her ankles.

             3. The ‘guest’ room.

This simple, fine haired character is not usually a protagonist.
Not even in her own poem / painting / stitching / song.
But upon her fibre
are embroidered
simple truths

             1. You can’t unwhisper a secret.
             No matter how loud you scream its antonym.

             2. You can’t unmake a baby.
             Even if you wipe your slate clean.

             3. You can’t unlie a lie.

My bed is made of wood
and creaks beneath the weight of breathless love,
but my bed is a motionless boat
that takes me where I want to go.
It carries my solitude better than I myself
and knows my dreams
and takes pity on me.
My bed is almost a cloud,
it’s a carpet for the footfalls of my heart.

In half-light, or in darkness,
in my bed I meet my wife, my children, my books,
my memories, and my cigarettes.
And I come across God, sometimes,
in the light of an afternoon like this,
that kisses closed eyelids with its fingertips.

I love my bed because I rest in it as in my death
and there I feel how life may yet triumph.

I am thankful because I have a bed
and it’s the same as if I had a river,
just the same.