Driftwood

I collected all the fallen limbs and driftwood memories.

Looking into your eyes, examining your face
the details of every freckle on your arm, the shape of your ear
your smile and lips.

To make driftwood art and admire it all day.

Some days, the hard ones
It feels like some unknown people piled all our memories up and set it alight.

Warmed themselves by the fire of the passing night of memories that never happened.

It fuels my sadness, a touch of resentment.

Who are these well meaning people, perhaps cold, they were, who had to warm themselves by the fire of us to feel alive.

Who threw in a pinecone of ‘what if’, or ‘why would you’ that sputtered and sparked in the flame.

I know all the things that they say.

I spend my days willing the life out of me, as alone as one can be.

So these humans, whom I do not envy, the ones who are alone like me, can know all the kindness that resides within. As one who knows what alone really means.
Fort Beach, Tasmania

Tell her

How do I tell her?
Devotion rises
Tide to chin
Sea grass waves
Goodbye

How to live a dream?
Kitchen window spying
Blue gum branches
Conjures fantasies
Surprises

How to love oneself?
Believe there is more
Waiting somewhere
Far away unknown
Renowned

How to make sense?
Words splayed daily
Confusion sets in
Love on the spectrum
Beginnings
Fogbow on Derwent River at Taroona, Tasmania

Scattered past

Grateful for delicious cake
Left over from celebrations
Side glance conversations
Walking past to other table destinations

Qualifications on displays
Of generous affection
Home made, ends of yarning
Only small price to pay

Tid bits of life history
Scattered on forest path
Leading to bare timber hut
Alpine hills, no wood heater

Scaling walls with hand sized holds
Cold and rough chalk grip
Overhang semicolon coming
The weight of it

Slimming, championing own cause
Slough off personal flaws
Penning my life's work
To scatter into the silence

So it is to love the unknown
Grown accustomed
Sparse reply a gentle sword
To hang on her every word

Untethered

Senses seeking places
Where time stands still
Burden drifts away
Nonsensical rules fade
Sink to murky depths
Disapproving looks cling
To craggy rocks
Boom and crash of waves
Soothe the news of today
Diggers on parade
Clanging bands and gongs
While my heart simply
Called by siren's song
Long Beach Sandy Bay

Effervescent

Feeling frivolous 
Drowning in many words
I invite her in
To swim in the
Whitewash
Or else
She is too smart
Throw me a life ring
My bubbly personality
Giving me a hangover
Neurodivergent mother
Sweet as a soft drink
Filled with warm air
Drink sparingly