moon haiku

the moon is not just
a mirror to the sun's light,
it's ocean's lover.

March 2019 cycles

You can't love the wounded part of you by loving another person with the same wounds
When they don't want your love, it feels like you yourself arent being loved

You have the same needs as them
You have the same light in you
You have the same fears in you
You have the same glory and shame

This is what wants attention
Inside you
This is what needs your love
Inside you

This turning to yourself
Is the work of healing
And loving

Loves lost and found

No words
Can describe the light and dark of being
That would rise to the surface of my skin

A tide of love coming up
From my heart
Drowning with memories

The first touch

The first kiss

The shameless, sensitive 

playfulness

Those subtle strong shoulders

Stretched in ecstacy

Golden curls
Nestled gently, fleetingly, guardedly

The light, those eyes, that skin

through trust

our time-travelling, alchemical desire

faith made flesh

Gladly drowned
Gladly borne in love
Gladly cherished
Gladly mourned, my loves

Those lips
Those kisses
Owned that self and are lost

dissolved

like an estuary

changed by the tides and the seasons

The dawn could not have come without the fall of sunset,
And the long night,

It is a love song to love beyond lovers.

Haiku two

As the cherry tree
surrenders to winter's death,
so transform yourself.

Threshold

I smell like you
Moving through the mist
Her name rises
Like a long goodbye

Weaving, weaving
My heart has been parting
At this crossroads
I ask for a blessing

You're still on my skin
I stand at the edge
Already gone on ahead.

Gevind en verloore

Ons het mekaar herken
Jy het my besef
En ek het jou gesien
En ons het liefde dit genoem

Maar die jaare waarin ons stories
geskrywe was
het nogsteeds die genesing oorloop
ons was halfpad
sonder water
sonder kaart

Ek wou ons albei red
En jy wou nie stop nie
En dit maak nie saak hoeveel
Keer ons sonsondergangs toe ry
Daar kom die maan
En skaduwees hang oorals
En die lig is kort kort
Ander kant die aarde
ek kan jou gesig nie sien nie
My hart hou vas die glimmer van jou lig
Teen die nugter koue
Wat val
Ek wag al weer, n honderd keer gewag,
Ek draai weg
Voel die lengte van die pad
My roep
Om nie te gaan nie

Al het jy weer
Selfs alreeds weg gestap het
Opsoek of verlore of geroep
Weet ek nie meer nie.

Things left behind

Your early morning coffee ritual
That high speed dance with death- your story of surviving
A love affair with music
An addiction to work, an intimacy of colleagues not lovers
A collection of drinking and drug memories from school to studies to work
An overestimation of desire and commitment
A taste for squash
Soft butch style
A bucket of name droppings
The impossibility of giving or receiving real love
Weaponised anger and anxiety
A few great photos

hindsight is golden

You feel like a discovery
and then you learn
that treasure hunters always keep moving
and like to tell long tales
about the places they've been.

Tired

I just need to be able to close my eyes
and lean into your neck
feel myself breathing
and your soft skin against mine
to take for granted my place
for a few moments

To stop
tip toeing
holding or holding back
seeing closely
with soft eyes
and the horizon for a little while

Longing for the moon rise
to fill everything with bedtime peace
resting easy
at the close of day

autumn equinox

After heartbreak
once the ashes are scattered
yourself along with them

will you ever just fall headlong
without fear
again

or has that gone too
are you left only
with a leap of faith
that you must make
over and over again

Post script

I buried you
at New Moon
with every magic present that day

dug into the dark earth
begging for freedom

and now you're here
bearing the same gifts
the same questions

with infinitely more kindness
a shared grief
a second life

tenderness and laughter
kisses like spring leaves

Motherhood

Nobody tells you
(how could they)
that after you birth your babe
from your centre,
one holy day,

something singular dies,
you will always be divided
half your heart
relentless inside your great chest
and the rest
in your child
roaming this world and the next

Mary Oliver

a day late
marking the fall of the great poet
Mary Oliver
a day of petty bravery facing minor demons
whose faces I'm so sick of
and who disintegrate
in the light of her divine words
which never imbue
but reflect
the glory and ordinary joy
of an exquisite world.

She draws gratitude out of me
like an instinct
and points
at the moon shining in everything.

I feel that same strange, true
loving sadness
the she shared in her work
at the news of her death,
humbled
emboldened
again
to live my belonging
together with everything.

I think she would have understood a minor poet
drawing lines in the earth
tracing her sound
with a stick
from her great tree

ceremony

being held
in a backwards trust fall
into the waiting arms
old and patient
mysterious but familiar