The Magic Dress
Under the bed covers, my young one and I used to imagine
a dress that changed upon a wish
A gown of night sparkling with diamonds on dark velvet
a golden one with the shine of morning light, matching shoes and purses
Most had a heart-shaped bodice tightening before
the full skirt rustled and floated in circles over marble floors
Now I feel a larger mother grants us wishes everyday
with her wardrobe variations
I guess the dawn dress loses against the twilight one
pinks race violets blues turn indigo
clouds line the cloak and the moon hangs like a medallion
as we rest in protected beauty
There’s the autumn dress in impossible shades one refuses
to step on later as if making a dancer’s mistake
It smells of mushrooms
Of the shabbier outfit in cities, I love the pockets of gardens
the worn aprons of parks, flowered
My favourite one is the jungle dress
Its mottled green fabric is rough in bark and soft in fern
Lichen adorned, dancing in tree-crown coordination as birds and silk
butterflies dangle around. Pity some parts are scorched
The white robe of mountains reveals curved bones and spills
swathes of tulle glaciers, shorter by the year
Ah and the sea dress! How its swings to and fro in grey or ultramarine,
how its white edges foam the skirts of sand to the music of salt
Coral jewels hide and recede in this, our time’s tide
I wonder if the molten core glowering in red and orange
will agree to slip her clothes on much further
or will discard us as a seamstress picks off the pins
in a dress that is done and finished
Embracing Water
The world sits green on the edge of a
hill where I go and stay in silence
Together, we watch light and dark
entangling like lovers, all the jungle below
like moss covering round bellies of bark
We can see the mist hiding nests and native huts
and how birds bless morning with cry and song
I’d like to embrace the world as it is, even with us
But it’s like embracing water
All around, you can’t tell if you’re in
or out of each drop that pours down
in this spring forest shower
Looking up, I smile at the smell of being
held in the freshness
embracing all
Field in dew
Across a sea of drops, all still
trembling before gravity and vapour
walk this field as a ghost
hanging, clinging to shape
before earth and air and sunlight
trespass the remains of night
drink all the field
taste the dreams of grass
transparent translucent you
can drop
Mushroom poem
Erupting in black speckled letters
sponging from the mind
the poem has a woody smell
−one never knows if it’s poisonous
Beneath, cobwebbed maps probe the dark
mycelia murmurs tendrils and dreams
of a silence that is porous
This, the fairy ring, constellates words
sporing on a white page
falling in place, circling, reminding us
of the deliciousness of death
and of how shapes push through
its surface
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