Various Poems

Homecoming

I rush to the door, waking, walking
In the deep blue dream of the slow starlit night
Washed in the sea of whispered prayers.
You stand there, listening, glistening
From the shine of work done to pleasure,
The leisure of the true, who, when smiling
Spill apples and honey to the song of candlelight.

............................................ .........................................

Dreams

Who knows if vegetables have feelings,
Trapped beneath their silent skins.
Delicate, tender underpeelings
Suffered alone in the grim soilitude
Of their secret subterranean world.

Who knows if carrots yearn to fly,
And turnips to be (just for a day) peas.
What if tomatoes are the blushing face of youth,
Flush with the first warm touch of spring.
Maybe even onions fall in love.

........................................................ .............................

Home (How To Make One)

Take a couple of
Double A batteries,
Your favorite socks,
Some old photographs,
Two brand new people,
One three-pin plug,
And a television remote control,
And lose them
And wait
Until they find themselves.

........................................................ .............................

Simplicity

I heard them talk about simplicity.
With plates of china balanced on their knees,
They spelt out their respectable concepts
In plush phrases and lonely laughter
While slowly the cold night air settled around them
And made dewdrops from the vapour they spoke.

........................................................ .............................

Purgatory

And at night, when it is finally quiet,
The souls of librarians come stalk the stacks,
Ghosts of ghosts, they haunt the racks.
Milton, Shelley, Byron, Keats,
Eliot, Auden, Larkin, Yeats
(knowing no poetry, only dates,
they call him Yeats, not Yeats.)
Forgive them.