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

.





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

gull

into a stiff wind
your impossible still smoothness
and those blades

those blades

with all their small twists, all their
twistings

one does not stop loving

i'm not sure i have enough fingers.
one does not stop loving.

each of you i hold
in cupped hands, dreaming
and with each
dream
dream
dream

each pain and pinch and slap
each loss and lack
each shovelful at the foot
of the mountain

i hold you all, and my fingers
remember
remember
remember

sshhhh
i will hear no voices

but my meat remembers
meat
meat
meat

and the slap
of flesh on flesh

and the meeting of
meat
meat
meat

i say these syllables
into meaninglessness

i stare at my fingers

and i love you
all
all
all

nowhere is it said
that one must stop

and i will not.




.

it started so simply

i thought i'd let you all out

for a bit of a scratch around the garden.
the odd grub or worm.
maybe increase the egg yield.

now you get yourselves up in the morning
and put yourselves to bed at night.
i don't bother with the gate
and the six-foot fence
is no obstacle.

but yesterday
when i came home
i saw one of you walking down the footpath.

i'd swear you had your purse
tucked under your wing
and were off down the shops
for twenty Rothmans

and a head of cabbage.

and the neighbours are talking.



.

the true princess

the true princess cares not

that her robes
once graced a window.

the true princess cares not

that her coronet
was, until yesterday, a yoghurt tub, and buttons

the true princess cares not

that her ballroom
is a tinselled school gymnasium

the true princess
is not born of kings

the true princess
holds court in my heart

the true princess
moves with easy grace

through
a convocation of minor royalty

flying with jack

"HEY! how did you get here?"

my son asked, when

he noticed me behind him.

"i flew"

i replied.

his five year old

not-quite guile-less eyes

widened.

"can you really fly, dad?"

(me, airily)  "oh yes.  but i only do it

when no one is looking.

people often get upset

when they realise you can fly."

"can I fly too, dad?"

"of course.  it's easy

when you know the trick.

but don't let on.

people

might not understand."

a dawning in those

deep brown eyes

the colour of

good strong coffee

in a glass

held to the light

happily

he ran off

to tell his sisters

"i flew"

the combined weight of their

separate scorn

was not enough to

drag him

back to earth

.