And after, there is only a gaping emptiness
the familiar ache
The desire to drown myself in soft things
Fill my pockets with pebbles and all the poems my muses will never read
And wade into the Lethe
To the place of the first breath after momentary pain
The liminal gasp between sighs
The first touch after a long absence
Body awakening to memory.

Welcome weary traveller, you are safe here. Dwell. Abide.
The scrounging scratching crawl you call a life withdraws.
Here,
Float in the fingers of sunlight through glass
The murmur of breath against hair
The glimpse of ripples from a water-strider’s gait.
Here,
You are small and safe
You suffer no harm nor cause it
Your existence has curled in on itself  
And blooms with the sunrise.
Here,
Your presence is a fleck on a robin’s egg
The bruise of teeth on a petal
An eyelash in sand
Lost, lingering, and longing.

The Lethe plucks the pebbles and poems into the current
Your likeness billows with ink in the wake
Adrift, I clutch at your fading hand
But rising, find I do not know this face
Left only with a flicker
Of a stranger’s arms
around my waist.

~
I cast my net
                  into the tributary

and release into you, a seasonal swim,

I give to you a mother's color,
        as you recite
        infant hymns,

                    you're a bleeder
on the days sunfire meters out its origin,
                    you're my river

free and clear from the grip

      of anchorage,

                         my river,

drifted on to wherever
                       moon wishes glister
~

Diverted, never Defeated

rushing like water into its misted future
crawling like moss in a camouflage of the past
giving lie to our tiny present

a passing shadow of day-creatures
flit for their designated eight minutes
failing to fully grasp their moment

while the trees stand watch -
still present, pointing to a future only they see

Diverted, but never Defeated

I can see my childhood amongst the fenced bomb shelters no longer there.
And the Goats’ Field still lies empty.
The River Shuttle’s gentle banks are gone now, replaced by cement walls.
So Billy can’t scramble , won’t wade and ford.
Cheryl won’t swing and Jenny won’t scream her thrill of horror.
Steve’s feet will stay disappointedly dry – much to his mum’s delight.

The meander remains,
the trees still bow to the much-reduced majesty of the Shuttle,
but we can’t join the dance from the walled edge
– we can only drink in the river’s weak echo.

- Willersley
- Marlborough
- Lamborbey
- Halfway Street
- Ye Olde Black Horse

The snooker hall, full of ‘don’t tell your mother’ chatter
and I can’t reach that blue spot even at a stretch.

The Glade stretches and hops down to re-join the Shuttle
- River Cray
- Foots Cray Meadows
- River Darent
- Darent Valley

to hospital wards full of discarded mothers, falling back into the river and drifting to the Dartford Creek barrier, erected by the well-meaning against the anticipation of that Boxing Day tidal wave

- a calculated sacrifice of our pasts for a hoped-for last laugh.

Layer by layer
the wailing wall
still weeps
leaks life
still happy
to receive
prayers to gods
who no longer reside
no longer invest
in their attempt
to subdue
a fierce people.
                  And the river offers up her long laughter below.

Eyes of the stars are
on the wings of the fireflies.
Guess who is marching
in the moonlit night?
The moon rows down
on to the river.

Has the Huri squeezed
out of the gem packed
tight door of paradise?
Basked out on the gripping
bank of the Sal Sabila River,
only to spill a heady perfume
drop down on the stunned
awestruck silhouetted night?

The eve has long gone far
to wear a khol of this
mesmeric shady contour!
No one, not even you
will want to miss the peak.
Where it all begins with
the tuberoses riding the wind.

Blankets of verdant emerald over fallen limbs,
Crooken arms,
Enclosing up and over and under,
Walk, sting, stop, puddle,
Ankle deep in laughter and brown, murky water,
Joy spread across our faces,
Mud smeared up our arms, legs, hands and hats,
Indestructible powerhouses with totally vulnerable feet,
Like ducks and foxes and rabbits.
The spongy bark or mighty trees fills me with hope,
That my wounds will heal.