Morning Prayer
[after Tchaikovsky]
Half-way through your journey you are called out.
From the dimmed room of your making, we watch
you moving like a corridor of shadows across a sea,
or the cool fingers of autumn stroking a tree.
Your small hand flexes and tightens, your spine
curves against me like a horseshoe, a strung bow.
The brazen scarlet of a gum tree fades on the hill
and like the season, it is still early days for you and me;
for my bones to soften, my body to swell. Wait
for me in the undertow of waves. It is there
I will catch you my little boy, and when
you emerge we can explore the novelties of light.
Insomnia
You are there again,
cast amid the flotsam and tangle of a wave.
In the half-pitch, pitch darkness of the shore,
the sea is tinged and flecked with cloud and rain.
The Monarchs on your breastbone,
awake, awake and take to the air. You hear
their wings through the tip-top tumble of sand,
and as if to keep dawn forever at arms length
the night moves inside the house again.
Shadows wait outside the door,
and dreams rattle against windowpanes,
they want in, want in. Inside the room,
your breaths are like a crumpled sheet, folded,
or the hushed silence heard through a seashell
washed up on a beach. Open your mouth
taste the sand, the sea salt, the silence
loosened inside your dreams, the wrapped
sheets of your longing softening your skin.
When blackbird wings flicker beneath
your eyelids, you'll know you're awake.
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