I was going to war
with accumulating years,
but found peace
on a daily basis,
dressed in long words,
short sentences,
intermittently shaken
by the occasional aphasia
of migraine auras,
spoken from the bottom
of lost semantics
drowning
in inconceivable phonemes

Within a perimeter
of groundbreaking hard words
I sit still
in a sanctuary of silence, birdsong
and imminence,
the nature of which
I cannot determine

Cats come to me,
and last night in a dream,
a big horse approached me
inside a large, lofty hall

I fear old computers
and racing bike tires
that seem not to hold air

The lady is working herself down,
and there is no way
to soften her fierceness

Dylan is 81, McCartney 80
I follow suit,
a few years behind

Things have changed

I meditate
in a circle of harsh words
left out of old conversations
from bygone years
that pulled their coats
up over their months
'round Wild West camp fires
long times ago

Flying machines waste the skies

The moon pulls nocturnal clouds
before its face

Lethal words become bonfires
'round the horizon

Everything is waiting

The long last rumbles
beyond the coniferous belts

Jabbing words become totems
of fierce wisdom

I roar the words of fighter jets

The oceans hold tight

It's a long way to anything

Yesterday on my bike round
I found an old dust pan
by the roadside
on a desolate stretch
through the northern woodlands

It was rusty red
and sharpened by rain and wind and years
I lifted it and listened to its beautiful,
metallic ring
as I hit it against the handlebars
Right then, as I was standing there,
my front wheel down in the ditch,
dust pan in hand,
a rare car passed,
roaring by at high speed, honking,
obviously startled by a racing biker
with a dust pan

I guide my thoughts
down the white staircase,
out over the porch,
into the garden,
down to the pond,
where time and its opponents gather
to hear the ripple

Somewhere is right here;
you know it

I leave these notes here,
for anyone who is looking

In vain
is the way to do anything