Green glass descending

I feel the dark before the dawn, and the quiet too,

As a handful of creatures buzz and click

And hold on to the black that covers them.

I kiss him as flowers might kiss,

Lightly and colourfully,

With the fragrance of love lingering all around them.

I let your words caress my ears,

Enveloping me in purples and pinks and blues,

As a curve of green glass descends on the sand.

I am absorbed by your presence

As the traffic sounds sweep passed,

A tide ebbing away around a marker buoy.

I smolder overnight

And wake to dust off the cinders,

While you lie phoenix-like and look at me.

Copyright, Bryan R Ward 2009

Blood orange moon

I have walked for a thousand years,

And passed you time and again.

As we stumble through the dark together.

I have known you forever;

I know you now

Lying inert, wondering where and when.

I offer you my desiccated heart

But you turn your head,

Inclined to the waning blood-orange moon on the rise.

I am despicable, I know

But still you linger.

With sand and water and doubt hanging in the air.

I am a trick of the light

And so without words

Your gossamer-veiled thoughts illuminate my soul.

You lie in my wake

While the world rusts and melts.

And my septic tongue is quiet for a time.

Copyright, Bryan R Ward 2008

The storm

A narrow strip of pebbled beach.

Through the bush a house;

Timber-framed doors, glass panelled.

Now look back onto the river.

The angles of the shadows change.

Long at either end of the day

When the water glistens through the haze.

And storm clouds turn it to steel.

Storms that never come for weeks,

Till the day you can smell it.

The still river suddenly whipped up.

The bend of it obscured through the approaching rain.

One bank of clouds hovers in the east for hours.

Stagehands stand behind

Flashing torches quickly.

Flashing torches through giant card cut with a zig-zag.

Sometimes the card drops

And all of them shine a stark blue light onto the cloud.

And there for a moment

A strange, ghostly day.

An eerie quality of daylight

That paints the world in a strange black and white.

The decision to dream and live is made,

And not to just survive.

Copyright, Bryan R Ward 2006

Brick & tile

Sixteen perches, brick and tile, pebbled drive.

Plucking weeds out of the backyard.

Swinging on the hoist.

Leaping off the slide, with plastic bats for wings.

Hitting balls against the back wall.

‘Don’t play near the pampas grass!’

Sleeping on the veranda in summer.

Milky green walls and timber floors.

Laminate benchtops and an extendable dining table.

‘No talking at the table!’

‘No TV at dinner time!’

No carpet so the food doesn’t get ground in.

A gap in the stairs, peeking into the garage.

The downstairs finally built in.

More space upstairs.

‘Stop thumping around up there!’

An old door as a play table.

Rising damp on the brick walls.

Green carpet squares, mouldy and wet.

Laundry strung up from beam to beam.

Playing under the sprinkler.

Toy boats in the gutter.

Grey Besser block pavers and more weeds.

Three of us like cats & dogs!

‘Go to your room and don’t ask to come out!’

Bugs Bunny, Bewitched, Get Smart, Love Boat.

Copyright, Bryan R Ward 2010

The river of forgetting

As the moon drags the dark behind her

A chink appears in the cloth of night,

Letting in the morning’s orange glow.

But I wake to a fog,

An unnamed sadness lapping at my throat,

A quiet dread as insubstantial as ash on water.

So I’ll be waiting in the usual place,

By the River of Forgetting,

As the day unfurls ahead.

A week’s worth of cloud flees the sky

And shadows spring fully formed from the bitumen

Shielding all my secrets from you.

But here we are,

You rattling around in my head full of hell

As I spend these hours beside myself.

But in the end

I wouldn’t spill a drop of you.

Simply watch night’s blue glow caress your skin.

Copyright, Bryan R Ward 2012