Boxed In

The first one-third of a litre

Is in the body

Another third is to follow

In thirty minutes or so

I am reading Refusing Heavens

Poems by Jack Gilbert

How can we not

Compare our own lives

Think of good and bad times

Though most are melancholic nostalgia

For what, in all probability

We never truly shared in the first place

The hospital process is new to me

Though hardly an adventure

Although my brother told me

He thought afterwards he could climb Everest

He was a mechanic

Then he taught accountancy

Yet he has offered a medical certainty

In a way which no one else quite achieved

Jack, in his poem Kunstkammer

Says: but the heart is different

It never forgets

You may feel, my body’s definitive reaction

Socially Distanced

The new playlist

Is one-hundred songs

Based on King Crimson’s

I talk to the wind

Bought for a birthday party

Not long after

Losing my virginity

In the most well-known sense

The wind does not hear

The wind cannot hear

The wind cares not a jot

About my virginity

Being more intent

On whipping up storms

Or crashing waves on beaches

Or blowing flags purposefully inside out

All of which

Is pretty much how I felt

When I talked to the wind

When I lost my virginity 

Silent Distance

Without question

I have made a judgement

Without knowledge

I have made the call

Is this arrogance

Or is it affection

Is this with purpose

Or form without content

And what of

Tirade

Or rant

Or unconditional love

Where would you sit

Where should I sit

Where might we sit

Together

No, no, no

Not ever those words again

Without doubt

I have made up my mind

Rhythms; Past, And Present

Wave after wave

Of shade then light

Wave after wave

On the ocean that night?

Memories rise

Memories fall

Wave after wave

With sequins do they call?

Wave after wave

Of doubts after passions

Wave after wave

Wear at the mind’s rations?

Reactions come

And reactions go, slow

Wave after wave

They seek out the flow?

Wave after wave

For artist and poet

Wave after wave

Don’t you just know it?

Purposes arrive

Then purposes depart

Wave after wave

The horse and the cart?

Projected Light

The sunlight falls

Onto the roses

Also though the leaded light window

Then over my shoulder’s stitches

To cast its shadows

Onto the long wall with pictures

All across this expanse

The effects of the breeze

On the trees, the leaves, and the hedges

Becomes apparent to be

As if a troupe of ballet dancers

On the rippled sands beside the sea

From a flurry to a calm

In plain sight

Before the crystals cast their light

How else to catch the wind as it breathes

But through the wavering shadows

Of those fleeting autumn leaves

The bronze statue

On the tall lacquer table

Is unmoved by the plant wobbling

Textures of the darkness, shaken

With the light

As on another morning we slowly waken