Lache Eyes

                   I

world no longer turning 

like it did when fire 

rained down from the sky 

and cars stacked up along 

dynamic hard shoulders

bound for cities that are

smarter than smart

like everything else

under the spiralling sun

I reach out but you are not there

or here or wherever it is we are

behind doors that remain closed

we breathe the lilac perfume of our thoughts 

as if the contagion were only physical

to purge is to be human

is what I tell myself 

when the desire to reboot

outpaces the need to remain

in the flesh of your suffering

during snatches of outside

when running the gauntlet of applause

that is not mine 

things fall out of range

and are no longer syncing

I tumble like Doug and Tony 

the faint line of my ghosting 

passes unnoticed through Iache eyes 

and I slip outside of this time 

                   II

where Boundary Lane curves

into the sandy shallows of a homeland

we've pledged to find

when the water table rises

the border ploughs on 

across fields and drains

into a pool of softly spoken rushes

tall tales

smugglers and pilgrims

ferrying night's cargo

between stations of the locked-down day

from isolation to solitude stolen

weighing the murmur of the slumberous dead

the leech coil of spring

pulls limbs from the causeway

we share an embrace that straddles the ages

like groundwater passing through rock

or the alveoli of chanced-upon clearings 

where voices come and go in the suspect wind

I can breath

I can breath 

expressway traffic has thinned to nothing

birdsong spans the air like a cathedral arch

and prayers take flight in the spaces left empty

all the world is contained herein

we chart a passage through to Balderton

then buffer in the slipstream

of our rebooted lives

August 2020