scar tissues everywhere
and the same longing that pours itself
into each fissure and crevasse
attend to me
i am the watcher
the keeper of the valley
(Scotland’s Highlands, December, 2017)
she waits, oh, how long she waits
death and life melt into each other
two raindrops from the same cloud
+ something I was meant to do somewhere I was meant to be +
alien brief stopover
history past and to come
wave-wash between the unborn and dead
‘I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. ‘
(Philip Larkin - Aubade)
+ my heart travels in the splendour of the endlessly running skies +