A Glass Tower

Happy petal-flame, dusky white dawn, earth-cave opening, miracle-unspeakable time. We have been busy this weekend, egg hunts in the garden, laughter and toasts and tender relationships eased in the iterative experience of careful company.

When we come back home, our little house is aflame with tulips, nettles, dandelions, bluebells and tall grass. Walking down the path is like an electric shock of relevance. What if we knew how to shake the seconds apart and let the dandelions in?

For me, this time of year is a good dreaming time. I’m working on a post about feminism in fairy tales, but in the meantime, before I went to sleep last night, my pen was filled with dream-like reams of glassy strangeness, and here they are laid out to share.

Somewhere recently I re-read T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, or maybe I just dreamt I did. It feels necessary to think about April as the cruellest month when the bombs keep falling. Necessary to witness that across the world this spring is playing host to hell.

But I think we still - maybe even more - need to take the time to stop receiving the endless unfurling fractures poured into us by the static world, and see what happens when the moments are cracked open by the colour of petal-rampant grass.

Hope you enjoy. Academic discourse will return forthwith.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

In the morning I wake
and see the tracks
of silence
what kind of beauty
is outsourcing time?
let the Sun Keep
dream the yarrow fields
and let the storms
bring the whirling track
of liquid change.
By a small path
on the All Father’s ruin
I can hear the wind
speaking its many names.
Let the moon
gloss over its liberty
until the ringing petals
resolve their brilliant silence
into the wherewithal
of clay-formed time.
I have seen you
before moonlight
felt your face
in the drizzle of dusk
You are the rhythm
time spoke of
tomorrow
and the sorrow
that seeds its store of pearls.
Look – there, in the bluebells,
the people are calling
calling us into the
bridge
the gold
and the faraway rain.
If you don’t dance
with the core of the instant
shell the colour
of the ensconced moment
the waking ones
will roar their absent time.
There is a glass tower
there
beyond the cervix
of the universe
I am in faith to it
even when the wind
sings
and the leopards
come running.
On your knees everything
looks closer,
more closely,
and the rhythm
is played out
in broken glass.
If you wait for a smile
perhaps you will become
the violet moment
we have all been waiting for.
If you wait for the grass
to grow
then the moment
will have patience
with the lock of your
dying
and remember to let you in
and when the door
wooden,
dandelion-shaped,
with an old oak knocker
opens,
for your moment
then it opens for the
old and aching
world.