A boy is without first words. At school they pool around,
low clouds—pushed by the falling back of his eyes—
pulled in their own wish to be home sick. His morning walk
coloured most by the plastic splints against his legs
—we hollowed out from his inability to talk . . . no telling
of silk in spine breaking into fine mirrors; dry bundles of
flower stems stuffed in each of his limbs.

One day the caring of teachers is heard awkwardly
in a middle-school auditorium ;
                                                              a boy begins,
much like a plant in the yard.     The first moments not his
to know.  Like the impulse of buying
a sapling at the fair; picked up already with some form –
       (where to from here?)               implanted as
rosemary that may once in a while make its way
into the kitchen,—or rampant lavender.

               But some are special : at home he falls
down stairs and cannot say how painful the world becomes.
Perhaps he is buried by the ends of love, or light enough to
be let out in the wind.

   ~

       We can do no better..
There is no map to hold and I have lost things into the air
like sound;
                       plastic cups on string and words recalcitrant,
or more helpless than
first thought.

It’s an imperfect game, where the same play may work twice
or inexplicably not—understanding something different.
       This tree is always the shade
we sat under playing cards . . . I cannot build a house here
with my soft hands
I cannot picture it—
                                                                      all floors built up.

A feeling that the first coat of paint is other than white
under sudden rooflines that curtsey at the edge,
and apart from everything, the third storey might be
a mess ;

       beyond the signs we live by—seme, pheme, delome.
                      Details lie in the approximate.

   ~

His body was wrapped in a thin coat, ruined by moments of
weakness his parents could never know.       I mean to retain
the order that slowly changes the ways of our ideas with
a sign of respect, like a knocked elbow that my body is
holding onto as a reminder of sight and air.

       The promise of these materials slips somehow before
onement..
The dead of bark is nowhere in the words, and
inside even the drops of sawdust it’s endlessly complex.

       A word is a place alone;—he wouldn’t want us forcing
our feelings to die along with forms.

We are waiting for photographs, somewhere

creation isn’t done yet;—the smallest red bricks crushed
under floor of weatherboards and fine lines
of similar mortar
                                   build up the look of an aged face.
Somehow we manage to do it worse than everywhere else.
Young mother pushes around the first story cinder blocks
—only the walls left out in the blitz.
And the village greens are mown with violence.
Land must first be scoured
                                                    back to its clay before
brown grass & daisies are allowed to grow
in the wake of construction halted.
           Younger brother to Ayers Rock tries to be heroic,
only to be mimicked by a bright cloud choosing to leave
across the highland.          A dried pool
– beyond how Hadrian left the long fountains of his villa –
            not reflecting the sky ;  just the fever
burning gently through tussock grass and dragonflies.

I just wanted to paint houses—think patiently about
the right reed to wet my mouth with
                        climbing from water like for the first time.
A soft breeze carries a wasp away and this year
I am still in love.          Bending down to pick a flower;
—bending through the expanse of tiles and plaster
                        blown across the hill.

The words were not ready,—at first
for innocent things like going to a party;
then papers, their job interviews
even eschewing of jury duties; and
         before long they were failing too in
meaningful conversations.

                              They waved and
stayed hidden;—too much was left implicit,
for you absolutely would not be kept waiting
at the door without reason.

It made you sad and individual, kept you
out at the coast toiling to write
long letters of frustrated lament;
         and between you and me,
to call them incomplete wasn’t really enough, was it?
You begin to think, was it something I said?
and strangely for the first time we agree,
that our thoughts could never be found
malformed as our utterances can be.