Believe you me,
I am not a somebody,
for I am
an anybody,
a pulse of a struggling heart
existing among
bone and flesh,
hate and art; a perfect pitch
tone deaf pilgrim,
steadily waking veins to thrum and lungs
to hum
upwards; I’m a ringing.

I am
your standard grandfather clock,
a fraction late on
the hour. A velvet drape
that in weight
fights the wind with a loving bend.

Studious
but,
unwilling to bow down to
lavish men and
teething women,
who are growing souls in and so
if I seem
a bit preoccupied with the greensward
I lie in,
with the sensing of a nigh
beacon,
with the discernment of a Shakespeare and
Sir Francis Bacon, with the
things beneath stones wriggling I am
not sorry; I have no more patience
for a midnight
without stars.

And take your time; that is my advice.
There is no rushing when
the light chooses not when it will be spent.
What wax have you been given?
—I don’t know.
But, laughter and
honeycomb and
a hand on a shoulder in gentle poetry
is worth the slowing.

And believe you me,
I don’t know,
any more than you or snow or
gods
that don’t say words;
I don’t know.

When the sea rises,
when the ocean bends knee to the will of the moon
I am
not far; a walk is not a habit,
but a force, and it should be me
that walks, not a shadow,
not a thought;
mine own body
going out
into dark.

A dream is no longer a dream if you remember when you wake; it is a memory.

There is no truth, for goodness sake;
there is only living,
and dying. And they are not the same.