Should I walk to the wide river

Under dozing bridges and laden

With boats peculiarly named?

Should I tear myself away

From this comfortable window seat

Where the reading is quiet and kind?

Should I jump, full force into society

Where shoulders and voices bump

Like stones thrown across the room?

Should I bring her flowers from

The Queen’s own garden, filling

The space with proper waves and nobility?

Should I spend my last few pounds

On bread to eat or books to eat,

Considering the importance of nourishment?

Should I set out to fall in love

With another dozen girls as we

Pretend that no such thing exists?

Should I be me or merely seen?

The afternoon saw me climbing

Hand over hand and foot over grass

Edinburgh’s Salisbury Crags

And all her views to conquer.

I stumbled up, light as dew,

A surface, sharp and jutting

Over all that light could touch.

The rain was just enough

To make me blink unexpectedly

Against the knocking on the

Door of the soul, even though

It lay open, myself all but bare

To the world, as it were.

Pulling a pen from my pocket

I resolved to memorialize

Myself in the mountaintop,

Not through words or verse

But more permanently.

I dug and pulled at several

rocks seemingly small

But anxious to stay put,

Connected and unmolested

By man and time and

Little pieces of selfish

Memorabilia. I apologized

To the Queen of all stone,

And slid softly down her

Back, ‘cross the smile

And away into the

Heavier rain to the south.

My socks are wet again.
The stones are still standing
After thousands of years
And millions of hands
Pressing grease into their noble faces.
What do they stand for
But human ambition and
To mark fathers’ final places?
The sheep call out my name,
And the hills have been waiting
For me to notice their hard work,
Their self chosen mission
To stand every weather
Until we all must pass
Through rain-bedded fields
And the bunches of heather.

When I am gone,
They might remember
The song that I sang,
The tune on my tongue,
Or the town that I’m from,
But the smile that I gave them
And my soft-footed dance
Between two hours nearby
Will be lost to the wind.

I’ve seen so many eyes today

Shifting up and down in the social ocean

Of High Street like buoys lost

But never giving up.

One or two have recently cried

Some from laughter, others not.

Another finds interest in the concrete.

Hers are full of flame, and

His are cooling off.

The old man looks confused.

The young just the same but

In other ways.

I am walking in the rain

And smiling,

But no one holds my gaze.

Leaning up against a tree,

The years wrapped round in circles.

Those rings kept wrapped round

In tightened bark, poking like a

Curious finger, Given some time,

I’m sure that the tree would

Wrap around my skin, keep me

Safe and silent and slow,

Allowed to watch the low wall

That wraps around this park,

Disintegrating into rubble

And being built again out of

That rubble. I’d see the children,

Let loose by their parents to play,

Grow old and set their own kids

To climb our gnarled branches,

Up as high as they dare to go,

Their first kisses under those branches

With eager sideways looks

That are full of something that

Always grows but never grows old.

 

I’ve decided that she is platinum.

With one ear pressed flush against the glass

Of an express train window. The golden light

From behind frames her profile,

Edges around the contours of a cheek, a chin,

And through her hair like crossing curtains.

I have been sitting here, thinking how easily it is

To fall in love with someone on a train,

As well as how all that touches her,

The trees, hills, houses, sheep, and valleys

That disappear at her nose, and are reborn at her nape

Are catalyzed into beauty, the perfect form,

What Plato pined after,

And so do I.

The ideal realm has found the ideal door to ours.

And just like chemistry, none of her is lost

In the transferring of elements.

And all of me is lost in the transferring

Of train cars.

I stood above the sea today,

In the grass and on the stones.

My boots are thin and frustrating,

Like walking in water balloons,

Squelching and spitting on

The beauty of the morning.

There are towers marking channels

Like a titan’s middle finger,

Or maybe it’s the pointer.

If I lose track of the time,

This peninsula becomes an island,

And I don’t get to go home

After the tide comes home,

Or maybe it’s on holiday.

They call you Holy Island

Because someone built a church on you

A very long time ago,

Thought you closer to Heaven

Than Edinburgh.

Lindisfarne the semi-ground.

Lindisfarne the Holy Land.

I want to drink the water that

Twice-daily drives away your shore.

I want to take you with me.

The rain and ruins can stay behind.

The rain makes the cobblestones slick,

And the map in my pocket is

Stuck together with damp.

A pitter-patter voice says

You don’t know where you’re going.

I do not want to know where I am going.

God asked me to stop thinking so much,

I heard Him praying in the teeth

Of the cheerful buskers’ instruments

And the jingling of their earnings.

What some will spend on room and board

And others on their daily bread

Of whisky drops to keep them warm.

His prayer builds chorus on top of chorus.

I think and think and think and think

Of the economic boost of tourism,

Of cathedrals ruined by a camera flash,

Of the painful fit of my right boot,

Of special treatment for the ill,

Of the books I’ve yet to read,

Of the joys I’ve let slip by,

Of the friends who I call mine,

Of a lover’s spilling red.

And mostly I think about

The voice of God in every hand

And how He stands the bustling crowd.

A wish will dawn

To build a tower

Placed with brawn

And willful power.

I’ll peel the stones

From the riverbed

And make a home

For words unsaid.

A trap for them

Of flawless work,

A guardian,

Proud with a smirk,

Who keeps his watch

For miles away.

And I will watch

From miles away.

It’s earlier than people think.
The clock is not so fast
As those who sleep but not a wink
And tell themselves it rockets passed.

It’s earlier than “I’m too late”,
If you keep your choices checked.
For eagerness might make you wait
Regardless of your will’s effect.

It’s earlier than “Oh my God!
I’ve lost the score of life
And all the things I should have ought
And all the ways to spend my time.”

It’s earlier and beautiful
To wake up with the dew,
Give in to your memory’s pull,
And worship all the life in view.