31. Dreamt

Finally,

it was all over

the wind pall

the caught stillness

of the lonely farm house

where he slept a night

on a dare

with only a torch,

some where

to be alone

on a beach

crowded with grains of sand,

where seagulls feed

on the mussels they drop

from a great height

on to the rocks,

it was all part

of a televisual upbringing,

eating sauce sandwiches

before old enough to go to school,

the baby sitter, the present moment,

was twenty years ago, immediately.

On a beach

composed of potential

champagne flutes,

punch-bowls

and freight train windows,

lifting the visor

and spinning his helmet propeller,

what ever happened,

they made him pay the full amount,

a bill for zero point zero zero.

It was an ongoing account.

We had been everywhere twice

so he commenced digging.

The models were made from blue Plasticine

the Frisbee rode the cushion escaping from my finger tips.

We could hear his voice

echoing

from the base of the lunar mining chute.

He was trying to explain

the universe

in three sentences.

It seemed

strange to me

that it took the loss

of someone I loved

to realise

that each of us

is unique.

Is that all you get it was the beginning of a new bridge I flew past, ice on my feathers

in the dream that I dreamt, I saw myself standing

in an incomprehensibly

dimensioned

cell of darkness.

There were flecks in my eyes which sparkled

and,

as I scrutinised them more closely,

their light increased

until all I could see

was a cotton wool cloud

of metallic white light.

She had hope

to tell her children

of something

that no one

had ever heard before.

That was when he volunteered

and the electric rabbit blasted the rail

on its ball bearings,

grey hounds behind.

He turned

and resigned

without a moment to stop

in a state of denial.

It’s just

what everyone told me

what no one had heard

as he slept

at the foot of the lighthouse.

He spent so long looking back

that his back

is on the future.

But he just folded it up

and hid it in his pocket.

It was a secret he’d take out at midnight

and quietly look at.

Tomorrow her hair will be grey.

A man,

a woman,

the heat of summer

and a plastic puppy

from aisle five

of a department store.

There was a spider web

obscuring the horizon.