#373 - once

 

7.i.21

373

2.7

once

 

up garden path

track ran to bush

 

everyone grew here

though no one said democracy

 

the fit fought

some would clamber seas

to be away

and safe

 

on ice for instance

drift away

so hidden by far

with the steering night

toes twinkle

 

a single sentience mucked out

a stable in the hold

once was a hollow log

 

were we to unexpect it?

throw questions to the quick

and bite

 

once everywhere was the end of the world

 

it’s only at distance

the leisure to read

 

once

how well things might have been

 

it was flat

and on to edges

turtle upon turtle up

had to sing to get a grip

in all remembered rhyme

 

home was a long way then

but well to sit the fire around

dream ancestors and jolly on

a tribe will do

yours mine

and we were

walls thought

call the cliffs to sea

 

toss enemy

rest easy

sunless on a wrath

just oncely

 

nightlife

or frog and moth until

damp dark come eyes up

live past the stream

 

gumboot bouts

erst and while

 

we undertuft

in hollow

come feathering

to mate, feed, call

 

were young

tricked up i

all funny finery

hat pointing

why

 

prison-hearted once

how we went

see them in a circle, bent

stumbled on these shores themselves

that was a great un-naming

 

once cruel and thought

but be my slave

pleasure this

and undergo

 

begun between these rivers

where the parrots dice

 

between the book and dreamt it

stylus, mirror, mud

 

hunt the great

risk widowmake

and frequently in birth was death for all concerned

pause thought

and still today

fly spears

 

once and then hereafter

 

come foresting, affray

waking new beds

and look, won’t you?

another colour

 

somebody stepped on

there was one fell

swans – who would have guessed?

 

once everywhere was the end of the world

 

trail off wherever

shit in the sea

 

dragons, unicorns

who cares?

dark in the trouble then

still flavour of the time

 

touch lust

were we to unexpect it?

all in the gauntlet run

who else

but

these were the very words once

hard yards or bludge

precisely remember

 

skip the foretelling

 

but through a crack

and darkly glass

saw to other light

 

so senselessly and hard at

wringing

at the toodlepip

 

once in the more less go again

and now

 

each mattering

as soul say

smaller smaller script

 

the words are downhill under

till thrill

 

and now

we’re all quite quite arrived

and now we’re all at home