Autumn Alchemy

Autumn, the great alchemist,
comes treading lightly,
fog-feeted and full of haunted sighs
hanging in the cold morning air
as cobweb fingers brush across foliage,
a blessing touch to leafen cheeks,
and then there is gold,
filling whole valleys
and covering mountain sides,
a world quietly transmuted
to temporary treasure trove.

Stolen Stars

Liquid stars flow in your veins as
your heart pumps forth the Milky Way
and the black hole in your chest
swallows ancient graves
and their robbers it devours, too
until all of Egypt’s treasures
twinkle in the catacombs
behind your star-soiled eyes.

Traces of Stardust

Absentmindedly you pick stars
from the fabric around your legs,
scratch the moon of your elbow,
wondering
how those scars
have been traced by comets
across the hollow of your neck
when you wear scarves all the times
you sneak out to take a pinch of stardust,
just enough
to keep your wrists perfumed in sparkles
until the early afternoon.

Lady Starlight

Unveiling a statue of starlight
long after the clouds have already sailed
to guard a now empty harbour
against the emptiness of sooted skies

Taste of Tea

I can never pour myself fully
into a cup that doesn’t fit,
a mismatched floral set of
what time can hold
and the space left
below the cracks

so I end up on saucer and tablecloth,
sputtered from chipped teapot spout
and only in spoonfuls you’ll find me
at the bottom of the cup,
just enough for half a taste.

Eulogy for Space

A eulogy for space and spaces,
for other days and other places
trickling from your hand,
through glass-urns, hour sand
past dimming stars on fading faces
to milky twilight, skyless land

holding dear old stars and spaces
strung together, hands and laces
bleached-out weft, galactic band
shadows, shadows overhand.

Black Waters

The stars around dissolve
and leave you treading water
above the pull of black holes,
the mouths of monstrous fish
from hellish depth in cosmic sea;

barely floating, you are forsaken
to gravity,
thoughts shredded to fishing lines
and running all the way down
from its grip around your ankle,
your hands, your soul,
through unseen rifts in broken corals,
into the chasm, devourer
of all that sinks.

Calculated Skies

At midnight you open
the window between your fingers,

mentally subtracting the city lights,
adding the shapes you used to trace
in dusty books, the constellations
now stored in the attic of your mind;

and you divide the sky
into neat little finger squares,
conquering the not-quite-darkness
frame by frame, multiplied
by many nights of not-quite-skies.

How To Steal The Sky

Stealing the sky is nothing
to be done in secret,
in denim-dark nights:
it’s a deed for bold days,
best done in bright midday glory,
as you take armfuls of blazing azure
and, smiling wildly, hold it to your chest
in cerulean rapture and sapphire bliss,
the heat of noon clinging to your shirt
as you descend the ladder,
laden with everything brilliant,
everything blue,
everything sky-sharp,
everything new.

Blueberry Skies

In white fields of clouds
patches of blue peek through,
the taste of blueberry sky
already on your tongue
as you look around,
and nobody’s coming, nobody there,
so you dive head-first
into the promise of forest walks,
September haze and October gold,
taking too big bites of skies
still hot with summer,
greedy for the sharp aroma of
all that lives, all that’s possible
under blueberry skies
safely hidden away
between dream-stained fingers.