Still night clean with wholesome energy. Fresh air set against cloudless silk. The dark and unbroken sky somehow smiling calm. I walk amongst a gentle garden with thoughts that mirror the night, ethereal nostalgic shimmers. Swaying emotion is charged and piled up in a wave like rhythm. Emotion stored to overflow on nights like this one. I find myself smiling and then soon I am dancing. Only me, no one to watch as I dance like I did as a toddler, for the sensation and moment. The joyous shedding of my disfigured heart, shrugging off the overwhelming absence of meaning. Sliding with the confusion of these days, shaking and stomping in step with the clarity of a single instant. Layer after layer of my decrepit uncertainty peeling back. Underwater feelings coming up to the surface finding a current in which to flow. Yes, I am lost, yes, I am enduring the agony of growing up, yet in the garden earphones in I am dancing.

This inner upwelling gives way to a more reflective exercise. Earphones out I greet the trees to find sound mind waiting. Each sense engages with solidity and the natural presence before me. Hands massage the groves and breaks of the bark. Forehead pressed into the steady smell, everything speaking to a stillness hidden in me. I imagine the trees as healers, I feel parts of my brain leap into place, reconfiguring. Here, I believe the trees to be on my team and hug each one. I leave in gratitude knowing we are one, a system that is not mine to own only dance with.

​

The spell of sadness set in
A slow magic pervades my every angle
Fog of my essence 
blanket like
 A hopeful reality threadbare
Cloaked in brutal alternatives
 Where wind gets in to incantate
the harshly true
So cold the prism left to see through

​

Beads of rain race

down electric wires

Fanned out from pylon, tracks form for waters rush

The precious glimmer of each dash

charged with suspense

Without warning they plummet

Gravity’s kiss irresistible

I watch in a window of endless time

On multiple lines new translucent capsules emerge

Poised for their tight rope show

hesitant at first

Then in sheer delight at the thrill of life

They run in parallel lines

Clinging on

Gathering drops of water until the moment they fall

When at their fullest

Ripe wet jewels find my forehead

A blessing

Nature’s gift

​

​Again

I am lying in the foetal position
Oblivions scrutiny screws with me
Such chaos leaves nothing to trust
Inner cold claims every good thing
Wounded by sudden thoughts
Headlines designed as weapons
In icy focus
Internal entanglement an insatiable trap
There is nothing I can say
I cry out with gibberish trying to sidestep language
Longing to utter answers unknown
Somehow the bonds must loosen and truth disperse desperation

Eventually sleep
With it the secret ordering of my mind
The morning a cave
To carve out the future again

What remains is a voice that was always there.

A nothing that needs not

a filling or stilted explanation.  

Less thinking, mind sinking into a wider field of being.

A silenced sentience this lovely loosening

All is hungry

here

Yet woods beckon

The track winds to its end. 

Sun on skin, back on

Back gone.

No path now,

just the quite tread of a new slower rhythm.

Desire changes its intensity, here drink

Anxiety stilled, no rush to remain quenched

No straining to hear the only sound that is.

Drenched in oneness

immerse into tune green and sunlight

the dance of dust pulses, sways with heat 

filling lungs and senses.

Each step a deepening, bodily tingling of peace

and pleasure now entwined, indistinguishable

flung with time on air

Dissolving walks of ecstasy

Fling into surrender.

​

​Is there a home inside my head

                                                                         A place of ease to sit

among wiring and chemical stains

Cowering
Hammered by thought
I search the folds of this brain
Betrayed

Wait as tissue parts
Space made for breath
A moment of calm