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
Strawberry jam
The course of it
Never did run smooth
But what is jam
Without the fruit?
All's well
That ends well
Take yourself away
In a small town way
Over hill and vale
Where dreams set sail
An earthquake
Wondering how
The earth could be
So cruel
To move under our feet
This Old Love, seafaring ship
Of finest wood &
Craftsmanship
Its maiden voyage
Some four years hence
When feral seas drove us West
I've sailed her all around the world
Docked in places ne'er afore found
Secure at anchor, I'd explore
Wonders of the world unfold
Through rocky isles and coral reefs
Its bow has turned me safe to keep
All precious cargo
Fit and well
Squabbling over fine ship's bell
The final storm, the wrecking one
Wind whipped sail and broached hull
She turned us in to sheltered bay
The weight of shore broke her away
We battled through torrential rain
Huddled in the bow all day
Then clear, still morn
Sun did arise
All our crew woke in surprise
Old Love was gone to seabed reef
For seals and manta rays to sleep
We walked ashore and carried on
Mountains climbed, beaches swum
Though many tales I have to tell
Of Old Love's ventures riding swell
A ghost ship now
No one believes
Such vessels are imaginary
I tip my hat, to one who'll come
To sail away into the sun
For tinker, sailor, Captain be
This Old Love was made by me
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
Count the stars of heaven 