garden

Standing

At the shallow end of my long, nocturnal garden

Staring through the shifting, heavy denier of my plot and its boundaries.

Dark but safe.

Backed-up. To the wall.

Where, from my eyes

To my feet

To the infinity beyond my lawn

And straight back

Into the cup of my eyes.

I am the point of entry

For a bullet.

(Which, to my neighbours, seems an obsessive line of reference for runner beans and borders).

I am a traveller

A beam of light

Warp speed.

Shot into a point

Where my lungs

My nape

My skull become vapour.

My heart

The purchase of a lightening tendon

Anchored to my bliss.

Out there.

Beyond the horizon.

Beyond the compost

And the deep, black hedge

Is the child who ran ahead of me.

16th February 1997