The Old Mirror
That senile mirror on the wall,
that seldom seems to reflect at all,
thinks it is a window or a lens,
a telescope that scans the hills.
When my children are playing near,
it hinges open like a door,
there are sweeties deep in there
and toys at play upon the floor.
And yet I like its hopeless ways
and leave it hanging on the wall,
it was great-aunt's mirror after all,
I still recall her large bright eye,
her smile that reached from ear to ear
she filled my life with love and cheer,
till they found her hanging on the wall.
List of poems – click / tap to toggle
- A Plate of Holes
- Amber
- An Old Woman Weeds a Grave
- Auntie
- Bees
- Birds of Paradise
- Bon Voyage
- Cairo
- Curve and Swoop
- Duskfall
- Fiddler'
- First Love
- Ghostwood
- Giuseppe
- Grandpa'
- Jessica
- Lay my Corpse
- Milf
- Miss Johnson
- On Hearing that the Bees are Dying Out
- Room of Red
- Rosa
- The 16A
- The Body
- The Carpenter’s House
- The Child
- The Creature by the Sea
- The Dinner Guest
- The Fish
- The Ghisi Miniatures
- The Gorgon’s Palace
- The Iron House
- The Nails
- The Old Mirror
- The Old Train
- The Other Side
- The Piano Tuner
- The Shadow Garden
- The Spinner
- The Thorn Tree
- The Uncles
The Shadow Garden
The tink and hoo of the singing birds
draws you to a park of shining glass domes.
There between the ancient lawns
and the distant archipelagos of cloud,
is a pouring upward of the trees
that hides the secret summonings of birds.
And when their songs cut loose your sight
and light the silver candles in your head,
you’ll tiptoe down a shadow path
to the garden beneath an old tin lid,
where in a haven of murmuring green,
where no rivers flow or oceans swell,
a pale queen suckles a milk-white lamb,
her nipple like a rose in its hairy mouth,
while seething back and forth in a bobbing tide,
choirs of robins scream like drops of blood.
List of poems – click / tap to toggle
- A Plate of Holes
- Amber
- An Old Woman Weeds a Grave
- Auntie
- Bees
- Birds of Paradise
- Bon Voyage
- Cairo
- Curve and Swoop
- Duskfall
- Fiddler'
- First Love
- Ghostwood
- Giuseppe
- Grandpa'
- Jessica
- Lay my Corpse
- Milf
- Miss Johnson
- On Hearing that the Bees are Dying Out
- Room of Red
- Rosa
- The 16A
- The Body
- The Carpenter’s House
- The Child
- The Creature by the Sea
- The Dinner Guest
- The Fish
- The Ghisi Miniatures
- The Gorgon’s Palace
- The Iron House
- The Nails
- The Old Mirror
- The Old Train
- The Other Side
- The Piano Tuner
- The Shadow Garden
- The Spinner
- The Thorn Tree
- The Uncles