My Light
 
Could I take your hand?
In my mind the skin feels
               uh
too close

walk with me
there’s this fence
one two three …
five strand wire
and sheep

amidst the sunlit grass
blade by blade step through
step      
how the hillside climbs
away in rolls and slides
tracks and shelves
where the sheep trail
little feet climb

from the top
where the Maori cemetery
hushes your mouth       gaze
out to the glass horizon
where the whales boom

I want to show you
                        the sea wall,
the tiny huts two beds bunks
outside dunny

and the wood pigeon
carrying the sound of five hundred
journeys in each wingbeat
downstroke
fat with plums

show you the cut cross
clean above the salt bones of driftwood
sparking up the dark

take my hand
I’ll try not to mind
how close you are

see the morning rise?
This is mine.

Separation
 
As I was cleaning my bathroom,
I found a place beneath the doorframe
where two edges of vinyl touched.

I’ve cleaned this floor many times
and never noticed that line before.

Funny, so often we don’t see
how completely two have joined
until they come asunder.
 
 
Night Dust
 
As I walk the glistening halls of night
my bones sing of calcification.
Fluid thrums from the caverns
beneath my teeth.

Poker machines lolly-gagging tunes
play in the spaces my throat
tries to swallow.

This is a new kind of dark,
where one day melts into another
in a way you just can’t be bothered with.

Moonsong
 
Flowers are embroidered in glittering beads
along the curves of my thighs.

You’ve heard my voice chime
deep silver along the horizon
as I rise
but you don’t remember.

I have many names,
Crow and Sickle, Arctic, Wolf,
Barley and Blood, as I shift
in shade and shape.

I cup light in my palms for you to bathe,
but you must come to me unclothed,
stripped of all pretensions.
I care nothing for the weight you bear.

Rest, for you have not known rest.
Divest yourself of clutter
and concealment. You are
a manifestation of love,

and I am a crone born from fires of stone
and cooled to airless ice. I hold
the traction of tides and seasons.

Time upon time I have died and renewed.
If I wash you clean in the bowl
of my lap and chant my names,
might you remember me?

Southern Alps at Midnight
 
The soldier on maneuvers
stands in the howling dark,
on rock crystallized to white.
 
The night strips away camouflage,
opens his ribs and creeps around lungs,
to germinate a small seed,
the dream that is his life,
whenever he thinks of home.

In The Fray Contributor