Landmarks and monuments
Memories hold a space
For absent friends

Landmarks and monuments
Memories hold a space
For absent friends

Our minds work - something like-
Predictive text and internal GPS
If I sense a state of potential
Belonging, intimacy, a resonance
Quickly, I calculate the length of time
Till I am alone, lost and abandoned
How often these sums add up
So it seems, I am waiting- longing, even -
For someone who might
Be brave enough
To prove me wrong

Partaking in pleasantries
Long loungerooms of livery
Is not my scene at all
I inhabit wide grassy knolls
Teeming with introduced
-though not so politely-
Feathered friends
Interbreeding produces most
Remarkable speckled boas
Though does not alter
The timbre of their boast
Goldfinch shearing seeds
With perky beaks and rosy red necks
Starlings line electric wires
Waiting for passerby to poop
Welcome swallow mud built nest
Line eaves like putty pressed
No other party of fellows in plumage
Could teach to build, plow and pest!

What if we could sense
Voices across vast airwaves
Ears burning on cold dreary days
What would they say?
One so generous to forgive
An err in judgement
A slip of tongue
A foot in mouth
As mere accident
In the ones we so loved
When words caught by wind
Return to ones ears burned
We find our dearly loved
Not so dear at all, those years..
Ascribing flaws to jealousy
An ex lover or mother in law
When actually the err
In judgement was mine
Afterall.

Solemnity broken
Neighbours perch by
Whistles beat blues
The deepest groove
Is silent, hidden, dark
It moves with you
Detects your presence in the room
A sixth sense
A critical fissure in the landscape
Separating touch and response
Dormant, though lifeblood runs through
Like a lost gondwanan valley
Pulling thoughts back to you

Twitching treetops
Suddenly surrounded -
Who spies whom?

So long to have lived
With tiny indifference
Savour stale bite
A lack of substance
Silence to question
Deaf ear to conversation
Closed eyes to presence
Denied a way out
So starved of kindness
Robbed of affection
The bitter chill of winter
All we know of love

A pollinator
Butterflies
Blatantly mating
In the open
Aphids, bees
Hum a love song
Bow and peep
No rules against
Two stigmas

Sun-burst braid of nerves
Melding thoughts chased
By gut reasoning
Breathe in deeply
Sense its signal
A visceral axis
When I see her walking
Down yesterday's pathway
The sun inside lights up
Warms the belly
Tingling spine
Heart stops a beat of time
Left speechless, still and wanting
