The Quiet

It doesn't arrive unsanctioned

or at the end of a stick

or wrapped in old chewing gum.

Conjured and cajoled,

quietness is willed into being.

Cougar-patient. Eyes of an owl.

Scented peppermint and cinnamon,

the implements required won't fit

a hand or pocket, quiet

most resembling fog

in the funk of night

or recent snowfall.

Bred in the fifth season,

it hangs in the air, like

water droplets or a family

secret or lost balloon.

Quiet is red clay scooped

from the good green earth.

The song of sublimation,

some adorn it with waves

or boat wash or hint of a wind.

It bobs over oceans

(an albatross, a dirigible)

and slips with the continents.

No haste. No worry. No waste.

You may choose

whatever colour you prefer,

whatever strikes your fancy.

You may knead its dough, fleshy

and warmer than lambskin.

I myself prefer

to ignore any instructions,

starting from zero, moving slowly,

at the speed of grass

growing in September

or letter to the Hebrides.

Dream-opus, or snoozy lullaby,

deep as a diamond mine,

the quiet is where sleep prospers.

Death-patient, it ruffles

curtains and a student's papers,

heavy as a last breath

or widower's sigh.

Quiet is a poet thinking

tiny thoughts on a Monday morning.

It's a walk at night, subsumed

with star-tingle and moon-hum,

the constellations' orchestra at rest,

musicians throwing down their instruments

to go skinny-dipping in a star-warmed pond.

Where the great white worm is waiting.

The Face

She had a face like

a counterfeit dollar

like a crumpled paper heart

like a dime found on the sidewalk

a face like a page torn out

of a Japanese phone book

I saw her and I knew

I'd seen that face before

a face like a last bullet

like a burning orphanage

like a broken balustrade

a face like a cat

cowering under an abandoned car

wars were started

bells were forged

rivers began running backwards

Sweet Christ on a bike

that face, like a door

being opened and closed

a face like a stained glass window

a face like a wolf's howl

like a secret dossier

a lawyer's cough

a flower plucked

a stolen handgun

Look, and you will see

a face that's a garden

in 17^th century Versailles

a Calabrian summer

an Akkadian king

she had a face

like an angry ocean,

the waters broiling

the deserts in bloom,

a single cloud

on the sunburnt horizon

a face like a baby's bawl

a sinkhole in Sierra

a convict's letter

a blind woman's shawl

Time went this way

and that way, her face

a Roman gymnasium

all of history

breaking its promises

the gods rattling their cutlery

I saw her face

and continents drifted

somewhere was another universe

being born and my art,

my art my dreadful art

could not contain her

The Good Neighbour

The Japanese woman in the next flat

is so quiet I begin to think of angels

kissing or the lifting of a hem.

I hear neutrinos bustling.

I doubt her existence.

As quiet as a sanatorium, as a novice nun,

her presence is snow falling at night.

I'm put in mind of hummingbirds

instilled with winter's torpor.

I think of carp along a pond bottom,

awaiting patiently on their salvation.

Listening intently, I'm enwrapped

in the linens of remembrance

and reminiscence.

Actually, I did see her once

in the hall in passing,

and I've heard her sneezing.

Which sounded like a dormouse snoring

or dust on a mirror or startled kitten.

Like ice forming on a dirt road's runnels.

A ghostly presence.

I think this may be love in its truest sense,

my good neighbour swathed in silence.

I believe the spirits of our ancestors

have touched us on the temples.

Neither flea nor bee, she's so quiet

she must be asleep or under a maleficent spell.

Perhaps she's reading Sumerian poetry

or waiting for a feathered god

to release her from some purgatory

beyond my limited experience.

She's as quiet as a prisoner of grief,

this world too brash, too brutal

for one so small, so enamoured of her solitude.

A banished pixie, this is her punishment,

to be my devil's constant companion.

She hears me railing at the moonlight.

I cough and I snort, an impurity

sullying her mindful meditations.

I'm just another noise, an ache,

a fastened memory of a former lover.

Out of the mud, I stir, a beast incarnate.