this is my church,
the fountain is a crucifix,
an alter, under
a stained glass sky.

My priest is robed in the splendour
of sunlight and splashing water.
These stone benches
encircling the plaza

are the pews, at which we sit and,
head bowed, pen to paper,
I pray.

On tippy-toes, just like a ballerina
a ten year old girl in pink,
blonde hair tied back,
dancing
All grown up now

See how she falls away,
the gate controllers calling,
they might as well be calling
her name

She almost seems too eager
to be leaving, though she knows,
she must pretend. Her sadness is
obligatory

Her tears are well practised,
as she waves. Like those dance moves
long ago. He is an audience
of one.

She wears a necklace of teeth
from the children she has tamed
She dances slow,
and as you come close
she pulls her red hood back for you

She wears a necklace of teeth
to place around your neck
It marks you as her own
and you, not knowing the smell of wolves
have become her snow,
her white

Now that she has tasted your blood
she will not let go

This bed is a beach tonight
an island lost to sea,
under an empty sky.
These words are a million grains of sand
running through my fingers.
As hard as I try, I cannot hold them
for more than an instant.

This is where the world ends,
and time comes crashing down
breaking the silence with everything,
anything, nothing.
This is a stopped clock,
and the sound of the waves
rolling in.

We're a nation of thieves
with every word we pass between our lips
we're just incriminating ourselves
This epistomological detective work
is just tracing the roots of our stolen words

It's funny how words can change
how we say “Expresso”
not “Espresso”
how we Anglicise,
and ostracise
How we sanitise our import culture
To sprinkle on our Tesco branded
Italian pizza
Trading “Coca-Cola” for “Tagliatella”

It's funny how words can shift
and change
How “Trattoria” over ever grill house
by some trick of the light
always seems to read “Traitor” in my mind

It's the way with airports,
they are always exactly as we imagine them
Everything in it's supposed place

I sometimes think they must pay them,
those kissing couples,
even the train stations have them now,
or had them first,
I tend to forget which is which.

All places of departing,
and parting is, we know,
such sweet sorrow.
Like the candles in a restaurant,
there must be the right ambiance.

I'd like to know who pays them,
who's running the whole show.
Who signs the checks,
and works out the angles.
I'd like to visit their office,
and pick up an application form.

It's cold enough to kill
out here on the frozen waters,
where the frost creeps in
to everything,
where the winter wind
will break you.
Bent double under it's weight
Naked, stripped of life,
on this cataract of ice,
this fog on the eye
under the frozen sky.
It cuts to the heart,
icicle daggers in our hands
or crushed in our mouths.
Their bones turning to powder,
the powder to cool water.
The blizzards cry, a howl,
to wake us from death.
Death is what we are.
Trapped in creeping veins
of cold wonder.
Time gets lost underneath
the snow laden boughs
of the evergreen trees.
This wasteland of white
paper, a reflected sky.
The clouds above us piled high.
We wait for the thunderous fall.
A tidal wave of white
descends to drown us all.

II.

Summer with my second cousin,
catching fish off the docks,
stickleback and perch,
their spines drawing blood,
all strung out on a chain held between us.

In winter we struck out on snow shoes
Trekked up the mouth of a frozen stream
to find a beaver dam,
wolf tracks in the snow
and a half frozen waterfall,
The whole world held
in that captive moment
a filigree of frost on every twig and reed.

Freeze dried dinners,
cooked over a Calor gas stove
on a tiny island, lost
in the middle of
some nameless lake,
which we shared with the birds and the sky.

We battered our frozen hands raw
running a toboggan down the hillside
and shooting out across the frozen lake,
screaming with excitement
until our momentum
could take us no further.

III.

He should have been Ahab,
that storm washed captain
born to the sea, he was
some mad gunner, screaming
“FIRE ONE!”
as we loaded hairspray charges,
and our soft fruit shells
rained down on the tree line
Plastic drainpipe, aerosol,
a match, and a potato
in his hands became a cannon

We were soldiers in thrall
to his battle cries
Nemo, riding the waters,
his Nautilus an old tool shed
on runners, dragged across
the frozen lake

His wooden house lost
in the wild North lands,
we could only go deeper,
find him, like Kurtz,
at the end of the river

He taught me to kill,
to tear life from the waters
The darkness was learning
how a deer is dismembered
How meat peels from bone
and fish eyes burst like grapes
between our fingers

He will always be magnificent
The city will not claim him
He will sink into the earth,
into tree sap syrup, and worms
to dangle on my fishing hook