Work in Progress

 

There’s work that needs doing. Also some place

that I need to get to, not everything

can be a zoom call. Sometimes face to face

is essential. Tactility is king.

Textiles, metals, intimacy, grieving.

 

And fragrance needs a different protocol –

grass crushed underfoot, wildflowers in spring.

wet boots on the landing. Wool coats in the hall.

The sweat soaked armpits of workdays cooling

on the bus home. Sharp points of unfair rulings.

 

There’s work that needs to be done. Some other place

I must be where helplines aren’t unforgiving,

all meaning isn’t derived from screens. There’s space

for spoken words, slow growth, small-footprint living,

feather-touch grace. Where tactility’s king. 

In packets of dark

Knowledge comes to me in packets of dark

always in wraps of blood, in clots of hearts,

enveloped pangs that force strange question marks

into ramrod straight, aligned like broken parts

from a meteor-flight, erased slow mo sparks,

pixel blooms of a darker black on black.

In the lightning lunge of a knife sharp truth

unseen because it comes in at the back

unfelt till it strikes skin in one smooth

movement and falls into a million cracks

the shattered baked-earth idol of a god

a minor deity in many-petalled mess

both worshipper and worshipped fractured, flawed

split in zigzag fissures of a marbled darkness.

Up and down NH 31A

I saw nothing much of the peaks -

the monsoon weeks
are not the best viewing time.
But the climb
showed me a few other things:
hope, misgivings
happen at every altitude
whatever’s viewed.

 

Sometimes it takes the mountain mists,

covered summits,
obscure skies and clouds heaped up
to clear the nub;
sometimes a diffuse, dimmer light
shows up the heights
so much sharper; clearer than
clear sunlight can.






Back at my own breaking-down-every-minute workstation, (or maybe I should call it an idlestation?) after a two month break in India. Happy with the holidays, happy to be back.