Looking Up

Nose to laptop,

buried in messages—

was that funny?

why is there silence?

did I offend?—

a voice from upstairs, muffled,

“Did you call the kids?”

“No, let them call us!”,

smells like the meat needs

turning over, table still unlaid,

“Can we eat soon? There’s

something I really want to

watch” and shit I haven’t

washed the salad, this

poem is still unfinished and I

forgot to look up.

Scrawls

What if we were wrong and those

scrawls on the sky really were

God posting his thoughts,

suggestions, observations, equations,

knowing the wind would

rub them out before we could

notice and perhaps

feel stupid?

Flask

The crack in the door lets

in more than light

a house unstoppered

the flask of memory spilling

out into the night

Clock

Hands, so often apart, count

countless seconds to those

golden hours, midday, midnight,

when, briefly passing,

hand strokes hand.

Buttercups

In the days of big trees

you might be as briefly beautiful,

as bluebells in their shade, but in

bare times you would be

feted as you strained to

bud a buttercup.