How did it all happen so quickly?
We’d only stopped by to observe
The lush foliage growing so thickly,
You’d have thought t’was a nature reserve.

We encountered a sign that said WARNING
PRIVATE GARDEN – ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK
Without heed, we crept in, non-conforming,
The temptation was hard to resist.

What a glade of delights! It had plenty
Of fructiferous offerings sweet,
So we picked till the branches were empty,
And sat down in the clearing to eat.

As we chomped on our ill-gotten plunder,
A terrible silence ensued,
And the both of us started to wonder
Why the roots had begun to intrude.

Round our legs they were violently snaking,
Our arms they had bound in a vice,
Then with a calamitous quaking,
The earth swallowed us in a trice.

So now we lie here decomposing
(There are worse ways to go I suppose)
The last thing I’ll say here in closing
Is watch how well this garden grows.

Coffee on my tongue

Sings a tune that vanishes.

What about this life?

Digging, our bellies slump soilward,
Coated in dirt.
The sun warms us, and we warm the earth.
That is the order of things.
When the dog days of August descend,
We make dens and play at being wolves.
Our noses tell us:
Go towards the dark mystery,
It is cold, an infinite sink.

After dinner, the night summer-bright but dimming,

We sat down to unpick the questions that dangle

From a ripening life.

Sliced them open, made jam for next year’s breakfast.

Lying there on your nightingale floor,

I remembered the time we walked for hours in the rain up to Mirador Britanico,

When they told us that there was nothing to see,

That the fog would not relent.

Now in this apartment, I still hear the whispers:

There is no grand vista, just going and going,

Going and going. 

A kitchen where the solarium once was,

Three of us (a decade later, a different constellation)

The butter softening on the counter.

I watch a squirrel excavate

The choicest bulbs from your garden,

Brushing the dirt from her harvest.

The price of this snack: a patch of flowers.

Both of you polishing toast racks before breakfast,

Gleeful and fastidious. 

We sit down to cold toast,

Now in its silver cage,

Reviewing each slice, each year on display,

Letting the crumbs fall where they may.

don’t come to me

on a moving truck or

in the crush of a festival crowd

and expect me to hold your heart,

keep it from spilling all over

when you didn’t even bother

to place a lid on it.

We were walking the trail
At midnight, when you said,
It’s rather bright.
We searched the dark for clues,
The waxing moon, the sleepless residents across the road.
But then we saw a floating ember on the forest floor:
A firefly,
The perfect explanation.

When we went out this morning,
The road was bone dry
But the evidence was stacking up –
Damp chill of the tall grass clinging to our calves, and the deftly bejewelled dustbin covers.
It was clear,
She’d come and gone like a fever dream,
A mousedeer laying her scent trail through the woods, then vanishing.
She hadn’t wanted to stay,
Only to let us know that she had been here
And left a parting gift.

When I was young,
I’d sit outside in the storm
And hear the sky crackle around me
Rain lashing the earth like a vengeful mother.
I did not know then that I was thunder’s child.
This I would find out only twenty-five years later,
Sitting in my friend Buda’s flat,
My face and the face of the priest illuminated by a single candle as he tossed cowrie shells into the bead-lined universe on the table.
We learn to take cover from the storm,
To stow ourselves away where no wind can reach us.
And yet, if you listen,
A voice, which is there because we are as old as every other thing,
Still says, sit in the storm
Says, you have been storms,
Been meteor showers and solar flares,
And eddies in the vast graveyard that only answers to the moon.
After the game, I stood up from the table and knew
That every thunderclap was a blessing.
It started to pour.

Just breathing, the body is poetry.
Flexing and heaving to its fleshly meter,
It arches and shudders from one verse to the next,
Parsing the rhythms of joy and terror.
My body is a mystery.
It moves and does not ask permission;
Hearing drums, it retraces the steps of its oldest ancestor.
It knows many things before I do –
Beauty, kindness, treachery,
Even love.
This is why I have no say in what it wants.
One day, a hamburger,
The next, to stand at the edge of a sea cliff
And watch the gulls drift in and out of their nests,
While it hums with the urge to take flight.
Some day, this body that does not take commands
Will return to being poetry,
Just breathing, until every line is spent.