Fishing with my son:

My son and I dived for that slippery witch changed into a fish

To escape the meanderings we shared as we sat on the bank

Of the moving river and tried to connect — but our words

Are not framed in each other’s history and the silvery witch,

Bloated as she is with misunderstandings, did not wish

To let us understand each other. She fled the scene of that fallen idyll

When we stopped by the river’s bank, cast words with fishing lines

And found the snags and tangles too much: The fish did not bite

So we two took up the chase instead for that shimmer of salmon gold,

Went after the tail, fin and the legend that a salmon caught would

Make the two of us wise enough be back again at that moment when

My son’s eyes looked up at me and I smiled, his smell still bright

As sunshine and my hand had its first chance to caress him and I had

Not stumbled nor had we shared the least moment of generational difficulty.

The Accumulation of me

The accumulation of me

Hanging from life's scaffold, drifting back…

To the tree and then from tree to seed. The seed

Takes me to the warm, wet earth; to ferns

Chomped by the powerful jaws of giant reptiles

And eventually to the mother, the sea...

When they cut me down they wanted me to believe

The blue fairy had saved me. I stood firm -

Felt my feet in the earth of a million years ago,

The remains of the sea in the tears that welled -

I am not a product of the waved magical wand

But of the complex artistry of the double helix.

Life did not come cheaply, not for the seed

Nor the tree, not for the plankton

Nor the first pulse of the original single cell.

All steps on the evolutionary journey

To the point where I am able to maintain the place I am

By standing proud on my own two feet.

5 am with my little emperor

5 am With My Little Emperor:

Just before the orange sunrays shatter the fragile night,

The first clacketty-clacketty tram rings its tiny bell:

With few but the driver on board the mechanical nightingale Merrily sings as it pulls on the strings of the rising sol.

The little emperor is held tight in my arms,

As we sway to the music chosen this early dawn:

A guide for my little emperor, pointing the way

Back into sleep after the day’s first feeding foray.

His fresh, miniature hands, tiny and perfectly fashioned,

Hold my knuckles, touching each one by one, as if he

Is seeking to learn the all but forgotten Ogham alphabet

From the secretive Druids who linger in my Celtic blood.

With dread, I wonder should I build him a garden,

Fill it with durable flowers and silken grasses,

Bind it with high walls and unfriendly purpose

And, in fear, create a gilt cage to safely contain him?

Standing, rocking, my little emperor finally asleep,

I remember two years to almost the exact day,

And almost the hour, sitting in the armchair, in the ward,

The trams’ bells singing and the miracle of Jack now born:

His sunlight body held in my arms for the first time; a weight Kept within my palace of cherished memories, (along with His smell and the first feel of his hair touching my face)

As insurance against his journey from here into the distance.