Blue hangs like a limp flag above him
Stirred only by half-a-breeze
Always waiting for tomorrow
Light falling through these trees
As if through ten green bottles
Hanging on for the fall
In a crush of commuting greys she wore bright orange
Less to draw attention to herself, more in blazing protest
Against complicity, against the curse of ordinary compliance
Yellow says hello
As the summer strips the grass to straw
And flowers forget their gazing upwards
Red bowl of the sun in a darkening sky
Curtaining so fast that I reach out
Grasping as to cup it, to keep it close
Pink flesh unfolds like a flower
This fragile child, as if fearing the late frost
Now wrapped up safe in mother
The night is purple, not-quite-dark
Wide open like the mouth of a whale
Or the space between stars
Black like before-life, like un-pregnancy
Like before the big bang roared outwards into us
Before love made anything possible
Grey like the day she came to say “The time has come for leaving”
The sun itself was choked by cloud
The very sea was weeping
Water falling down on these old rocks
Gilding them with liquid silver
This normal place, anointed
Age has turned your hair pure white
Like the soul that dances in you
You are cathedral and I, your evensong
Sunlight makes alchemy from mountains
Now gold in the evening mist
Far beyond the wealth of kings
Brown like the ground where we lay down
The earth is pillow-soft
And waiting
this fragile tent 