A Winter Poem

Home Is A Place You Can’t Escape From

You wake in your soft bed

To find a weight, a presence

On your brow

You ask it its name

You try to find its story

It gives you clouds

That are treetops

And there are rooted, downward

Strokes that are trunks, swaying

In a silent wind

But they are also puppet strings

And so you are pulled from

Your soft bed

And into your shoes

And the outside

You walk hard and fast

Shed your wool

And sweat

You aren’t exactly angry

with yourself

And you’re beyond frustration

Nearly

You chant your attempts

At embracing

All that you wish away

And it’s a struggle

You surrender to

Reaching the corner

On the hill

The trees breathe darkly

You recognise them – treetops, trunks

A yellow ribbon flutters

from a branch

And the world is suddenly

Alive

and Present

and Aware

It tumbles in on you

In green and grey

pulses of nostalgia

and bird cries.

The sombre, heavy, leaden

sky – your burdened brow

Is a chamber

for sound

Pigeons call to one another

With a resonance

Absent on a clear day

The naked limbs of the

red cedars

Expose their gestures

In silhouetted clarity

more poignant

more meaningful

more vocal

against a grey sky

than a blue one.

And suddenly you have a

shadow again

But it is subtle

You turn your face to a sun

Veiled, a dimmed glow

that has weight, presence

And the old garden

With its magnolias and black-eyed susans

And fallen camellias

Speaks to the child in you

of a wire gate painted

dull green

a kind of paint they

don’t make any more

And the russet leaves

of liquid amber

Welcome you back into

this soft place

this soft bed

You can’t escape from.

Beings noticeably present of late: Flycatchers, Swallows, Top-knot pigeons, Red Cedar, Camellia and other nanna-plants