Lighter than a coin
Tickle my fingertip
If it were to alight
Upon my point
Drifting aimless
Blustery winds
Tumultuous, feral
Wearing nothing but scales
Aching, tender
Shedding colour
Under weight of shelter
Another's touch
Fleeting, painfully shy
Obscuring its beauty
Soon as footsteps pass by
My heart, the butterfly.
A sense no one can live without
Yet barely speak its name
Some spurn the thought and shrink within
Though chase it all the same
A slippery notion thrives among
The family gathered round
As babes all supple on its milk
As grown, some never found
As fickle as the Autumn sun
Like lucid alpine tarn
Its sweaty pounding heart drawns in
Only to cool you down
Extremes of sentiment poures out
Yet ambivalence within
Shouts of joy, tears in vain
Rally cry and sing
There's really no escaping it
(The hermit never tells)
Longing pulls us back in time
'Fore fears can knock us down
If unsure, simply pour
More courage in your glass
Take your eyes off the book
Don't let their next glance pass
How to play the long game
With someone well versed
In flash fiction?
Do I promise to love their every lover?
Desire drives the narrative on.
How to salvage a life come undone?
When moving parts are irreplacably human
Healing work is painful and long
Until two bodies borrow, become one.
I've never found a cure for love
Though 't soothes so many ills
Loneliness to bitterness
All ailments of the will
For all it cures it does induce
Deleterious effects
Slow-acting apoplexy as
One's reasoning defects
A fortitude of countenance
Can barely ever endure
The fantasies that dreams beset
One taste a craving sure
Every line and curvature
In castles of the mind
Desire an outlet in the world
A lover sure to find
Aside from scouring oyster bars
Or ogling over beer
Apply the plight of sailor's blight
For one platonic year
While soaring new horizons
On verge of a career
Turn around, you've surely found
A love to hold so dear
For crafty is the nature
Of this love, as sly as fox
It's when your back is turned
That one appears in handsome locks
A warning for the jaded and bereaved
More than a few
If love's laid down left of plumb
Here's my advice for you
Consider all the perils, ills and falls
You fought as one
Imagine future troubles
Are they double, or undone?
For just as castles of the mind
Prepare us for our fate
So surely they will teach us
By the gash left in our wake
With clearest mind and soundest heart
One's path is laid post-haste
Though time is short, one's life is nought
Lest swiftly be embraced
All's well
That ends well
An earthquake
Wondering how
The earth could be
So cruel
To move under our feet
A Blue Gum tree
Giants of the forest, we
Begin well-covered cap of seed
With strength to sprout
Show tender leaf
Idle as the years unseen
Camouflaged by wattle screen
Delicate orchids settle 'tween toes
Fungi covers underclothes
Ten years on, it shoulders weight
Peeping out of covershade
Creamy flowers dripped with leaf
Birds to nest, possums to feast
Straight of trunk
Strength of wood
Nor let it be
Misunderstood
Not hops or apples
Poppies or vines
Thriving in these
Cooler climes
A love like this
It must take time -
Precious specimens
You and I
A dandelion
Much despised
Hardy flower
For every dig
Sows more seed
Until it spreads
Its reedy feet
All over neighbours'
Fallow field
A tincture tea
To pep the heart
Set flight in spring
A work of art
As little copters
Spin on breeze
To plant ungovernable
Bright young weed
A skein of yarn
Can simply not run free
If tugged or pulled
Will surely wrap
In tangled knots of weeks
Gently lift
Like pick up sticks
To unwind tenderly
All to work it
Round about
To clothe
Bitter westerly
Truly startling
How heartache can feel
Like a rapid rushing
Over rocks
In time, over distance
A babbling brook
A trickle easing its way
To ocean
Accepted by generous banks
Of rivers
To gaze upon it
Perched aloft
All creatures delight
Tumble, preen and feed
On its shores
So shall I
Count the stars of heaven 