Last night I dreamt of a computer screen.
On the screen, a picture of a strange fruit.
By the fruit, were written words
that would heal the heartache
that’s with me even when I sleep.
I take my glasses off before I sleep:
the words were blurred out of their meaning.
So, carefully, I cut, pasted, and saved,
against tomorrow’s comfort.
In the morning, I found the words
evaporated in a steam of lines and curves
and half-made thoughts.
Computers, pictures, words – none of these
will ease the pain at the world’s heart.
the silence of empty streets, the blackbird’s conversation, the hum of the grass
the colours of: daybreak heartbreak and commercial breaks
the jar of something from the back of the cupboard that turned up while I was looking for tinned tomatoes
A list. Any list. Isn’t that all we’re doing right now, making lists against the moment the world reboots itself?
Mix in sparingly:
A complete non-sequitur
– why do spiders lay so many eggs?
An elusive moment
– that one, right there –
of calm
– no, gone again
The crazy slatted angles of a chair’s shadow
A frayed string twisting in the wind.
Prompted by a #NapoWriMo poetry prompt so long it was a poem in its own right, and introduced me to the word parataxis, which means things put side by side.
It must have been the nightingale
befuddled by the streetlights’ glare
and the locked lips of the tarmac.
It must have been the nightingale
slipping into the tangle of dogwood and bramble
at the forgotten end of the garden.
It must have been the nightingale
drunk on the scent of the unfurling lilac
and the curled-up edges of the new-mown grass.
It must have been the nightingale
that while we slept poured from a spendthrift purse
the trills and waterfalls of its divine high-piping Pehlevi.
It must have been the nightingale
calling for wine, wine, wine, red wine
that in April brought a crimson blush to the cheek
of a single rose.
The day after listening to Sam Lee’s Singing with Nightingales programme, I found a single red rose unseasonally early in the garden, and was reminded of a favourite verse from Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam.