A Brief Paean to my Garden, occasioned by seeing a shaft of sunlight strike, after some days of constant rain

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O, exuberant pineapple!






.

house

they stamp childness into floorboards

house folds them up in wideawake opendoors

billows bedsheets laundrywise

breathes them in

and out

they sing childness through walls

out windows into clearblue

house swings low a

woodendrone makingsong

hums and hugs it all the livelong day

they wind house into their plaits

wear cupboards for shoes

open house bookwise and draw

in the margins.  house dogears photographs

all stickycornered crackspined and tissueleaved

they shout about house quarrelsome

feedem patacake mudwiches

dress dollypegs shoot marbles for funsies

house squints along wooden arm

says keepsies

they run rings round house widdershins

sing crosstich rainyday fingerpricks

house spells magic alphabetty

knits cobbyweb sweaters knobwristed

fixes shadows on with cobblerspegs and gob oil

they splash house kettlesteam bathtime

wriggle slipperyfish soapsuds

p’tending littlepig tadpoles

house cups chubcheeks tenderloined

buffs roughpink in terrytowel

they play sleepover.  share beds pass out tumblepupped

under vanillamilk and honeyspeak

house eases a wooden buttock

on a stone chair

draws breath moth to light

they tell house seeyou clattershout doorslam

house rumbles emptybellied

coughs chalk dust

pulls greenrug round ears chillfingered

sings nighnight sleepytight seeyou

seeyou seeyou

untitled.

and then it broke
over him like a wave

and he was flung
down
the face of it

and he kicked

how he kicked

and the white
the white
white

water

and he would have drowned but for swimming

and he would have swum but for drowning

and he laughed in the white
water he laughed

and every drop a bright

pearl

every drop

a pearl