#98 - in this skin

7.4.20

98

in this skin

(a given again)

follows ‘one fine day’, for godsbother

in this skin

hours obey

like any other colour

and temperature in tune

rhythm tin hat too

down in the last shower

my bona fides

a touch through itch to season

and all the forest’s barking

ancestors! some by the skin

of their teeth

wool over eyes

all sadly gone

at every point a different life took on

with always a new word tripped me up

that was breath between

as in the garden

so many of the nameless fell

there’s the part of me believes

it’s all still there –

my mother’s house

the bombed out city

a library at Alexandria

in it my father’s lost novel, The Crazy Prophet

and the one he never finished, The Man from Overdraft

no longer unedited

now remaindered

still under the pool table in the shed  

there’s danger, Will Robinson

and where’d those eyes get blue?

but I was born a passenger, never to arrive

cryogeny

a porthole wink for wonder – coasts!

reefs and atolls, the glass bottom

(some say floor)

mainly it’s been deck games

dreamy cabins, labyrinth of tides

some stubble out and reaching

luxuriant too

stretch as far as get it in

anyone would

we all had to have been helped

in the dizzies with testing an edge

be like the world, go round

a self forgets me frequently

still I keep the borders as if they were mine

now in the garden, which tree’s he?

grapefruit I believe, halved, bear-honeyed

at the top

by tendril tucked, vine over

the ordinary secrets

take down your fences

overrun top paddock too

we’re all of us buried there

in the company of pumpkins

of course we cannot picture

those who have already

gone to a better place