Valentine's Balladin

L’Equilibriste de la particule
De sa plume magique
M’a dédié la lumière
Offrande de doux songes Oniriques

Couchant l’herbe folle de votre indolence
Les yeux au ciel
A l’heure où les hirondelles font ripaille,
En piqué à ras de blé

Le soleil parti dans un autre jour
Une douce lueur
Vous laissant le souvenir de son ardeur
Une promesse

Tu m'offres les effluves de Notre Histoire Dans l' écrin de tes Mots


My Story

And as your soft weight
beats through me,
remembrance into these warm stones,
I know now, how I will tell my story.
---
We walked a long way today
dissolving bright and reflective
into this warm August air
Beyond the men
gathered with their long rods
casting the incoming tide
and running their dogs
along this Jurassic bank
We stuffed our pockets
and tracked, wide mouthed,
pairs of long-necked birds
skimming by inches
the rolling white water
And you climbed that roof
to declare our arrival
You sang a duet with the wind.

And, in sanctuary
in the lee of the shack, I fumbled
for a how and a where
finally piecing together the mosaic
naïve and bird-like; dry-mouthed
placed my gold offering in its eye
And from the sea-edge
followed your sliding descent
saw your unfastened hair cascading
and settling, icebound above me
Unsurely rooted before the coming roar


I heard four words crash
tide-worn and salty from my mouth
and your breathless reply,
almost stolen by the diving gulls
We almost drowned in the surf.


Blue Eyes

You know that blue

The one
In crowded June skies

Through holes: whisper-edged

And brilliant
Like a flash from an old box camera

That blue some call Eggshell

It was that kind of blue

Hard and vulnerable as eggshells
Cracked me

Across the counter

When she glanced up
Over her coffee

And slow-blinked


The Walk
My hands spread a landscape across the still-warm car-hood.
Our choices: One straight yellow through neat squares to the harbour, the other: black diamonds across green. In flat brown contours, a steep deception.
My fingers trace the diamonds up to the eye-lashed viewpoint.
I picture your hair: unbound, kite-tailing;
Your search of a sea less innocent than the light blue on paper -
In the fold of the page, a tidal-wave rising.
---
We step through the hedge. Wrapped in the cool underside of summer,wade the stream of last year’s leaves.
In the buzz of flies,under heavy boots - The dry snap of bones.
---
Ambushed, you crash behind methrough wires of bracken; black berrieswith their pretty pink flowers scratchsoft leaves sting; with no compassin the high sun, I charge forwardto a dead end. We back trackpast your flash of doubt, camouflagedby your quick covering smile. You findan arrow on a post, as I steal a glance at the map.
Then we fall, into the light.