We all were Young

For my sister Kay, on her birthday.

We all were young & it was a shining time

Of freedom & adventures we sought

The meaning of the meaning in everything, everything

Holding hands we entered the playground of the gods.

Moon through window glass

Shell pale in the morning sky

Some time in the Spring

Mounded clouds piled high were our relatives

In that corner of the field where I sang to myself

Above that small room where I sang to you;

Memories of skies, the same but different

Cloud my vision now as I walk down my street.

We are little birds

Sparrows in a sycamore

Me & my sister

We all were young yet felt such nostalgia

For what? For when? & how could we feel that?

I favoured the many-worlds hypothesis

Even then, age seven, all those lifetimes were plain to see

Spread out more like a map than a river-arrow's flight & I knew that I was dreaming

“Where do stones come from?”

I went to ask me Mam

“Underground,” she said

Dear Kay I'm holding your hand in a field by a stile in a wall

By a tree in a Summer of birds & flowers & sea

Every stone looks up at us with envy

For we can walk & they are stuck with geology.

It rained all day long

Nose against the window pane

Frogs in the garden

We are not aliens, our bodies are made of bread

Bread of the fields, meat of the blood of our kin

Teeth & gut & taste; hunger & fullness are stanzas & verses

In some secret song of days coming & going &

Land & sky were a state of being rather than a spatial structure.

Dipping ginger snaps

Into cups of morning tea

At Mrs. Turnbull's

I was a loner, less so than you & more afraid

I hardly knew you, nor you me we kept our secrets

I cried all the way home because I couldn't understand human cruelty

I lacked nothing but still I yearned for I didn't know what;

Something invisible, I know that you did too

& that now you have seen it, but I am fortunate;

I didn't have to die.

The three legged tank

Where Grandma boiled laundry

The smell of fruit pies

& we could see & sing & hear the song that left our throats

To fly to Heaven & we walked & ran & jumped up & down

& danced about all over the place being ourselves

Because we belonged to no-one

& the universe had many eyes & a kind face & tret us gently.

The crisp, bright pages

Of a yet unopened book

A secret moment

You jumped from the roundabout

Straight into Mam's arms.

I was afraid of banana slides

& dreamed about bridges.

The Fairy Folk showed me that

Every boundary is a place & every place is a boundary;

There is a mountain in the middle with three peaks
& a wind, a wind, a wind that carries our voices

Further than we can imagine.