A Spanish calligrapher visits Pearson Park

The second hand glories of those rooms look out on a circular path about the park,
Dust motes, high ceilings, moulted carpet and cornice,
A mirrored dresser not made anymore,
All rented of course,

Casts of horsehair and brick in those walls soak in the pathways to this park,
Cliff top clay prints the sole of his shoe,
A stack of rock slouches to the East,
Soft land around reduced

A bay lined with shale which breaks, pencil nice, to write on the sandstone,
An elephant trampled leather coat hides a stone
Stolen from long Spanish rail tracks,
In that pocket alone

Thumbed years smooth, then a conker picked, fresh sleek oiled, dried then wrinkled,
Both now palmed in the crenel of his hand,
The coat wears the unshaped shoulders
Of nearby hills, a castle on the Aln

Other castillos speak, Lorre where thin sliced alabaster left striations in the light,
Monte Aragon, weathered down angles at rest,
Close to perfectly abandoned villages,
Where inhabitants untied their hopes and left

Their doors unlocked, mountain walkers now scuffle through papers in the desks,
Yellowed from being alone, the fine script
Looks as if history was expected,
Written in strict ink

The pressure, curve, and shape give devotion beyond words, watched then taken,
Exquisite discipline calling, the calligrapher's
Pages flock about the room,
The Callers unwary of the look to their figures

Cast in the ordinary they seldom destroy, the calligrapher watches from the walls,
Pages feather settle on the wood he walked,
When the callers took nothing,
His hand became stark

A forge to the future of sleeping walls, his memory licks from the mortar,
Into the Victorian room, slips between all my pages,
And loads them with light
From other places.

Going for a Fall

I sometimes cry when I see photos of my daughter,

Hair a tumble of golden locks at two,

The first time she ever stopped running

Staring down at her first pair of shoes.

Now what do you expect me to do?



Before that we would take her for our walks,

Packed up on my back she would pat my happy head

Until the sway of my stride would loosen her lock on awake;

Her body blissfully slooped in the trust

That there was nothing more natural than to be a two year old giant

Dreaming of the hills dividing before her huge steps



Knowing that no men can stand colossus for ever

I sometimes think she deserves better, she should always know

There is a man whose frame is iron, whose back is unbreakable;

Convinced his strength will hold her massive in the sky forever.

But as two turns to twelve the stride shortens a foot slower and the sky declines,

And dreams? The unconscious ecstasy of a trance like man.



But to watch her know is a garland not all fathers hold.

My own is immortal under the sun,

Flesh muscled, massive stature, though he died alone.

Charley’s Garden

When his part in the garden started Charley cupped handfuls of fine ice-scraped loam and let the tilth run from his fingers into the sea,

Caught by the sharp wisht of a northern wind, laying down a rich dark rind in lands he could not imagine,

His father told him not to play with the soil. It was a waste, the mineral chain of their family bone, though each year it took one step less to reach the last row of lettuce,

The sea knows nothing of the claims of men, seeking to shape all land as its own.

Something among the strata of Charley’s family, the suck and rage of tide and wave, the ancient way ice loaded the land, made the garden harder.

Work hammered iron, this land was white hot and turned the sea to steam around it. This rock would not make easy sand.

The sea knows how to wait. It can take time outside and grind it to understand. Divide around the prow, weep away at the softer cracks, mine the ground.

One night half the moon explodes, giant sea foam flowers grow, fallen architecture of the ancient mason.

Each day in his eighties Charley took the precipitous walk to his vegetable patch. Straining like a wind blown craft his arch collapsed.

The last stack, land leans towards the East, tipping time tended to the rising sun. A final bow before the level venture of the waves.

Of clouds and clocks

Once water allowed time to drip.
It fell from a sea wall at Changi beach
Into clear shallows where clouds of tiny black fishes
Once cast shadows on to the fine grained sand,
They sharp-darted from the edge to the centre,
To reclaim a shape that was not planned,
A form that is also formless.

My gaze has gone among the shadow and the sand.

On the sea there is a lot of man,
Taking small motorboats to Singaporean Islands,
Muscled, rowing, catching snakes,
Talking us into the torpedo room while the captain is away,
The shadow ticks, those known would be best alone.
Waiting in a damp bus shelter to wave goodbye
The drop drips, the cloud forms and has gone.

Those clouds, an undefined collection of all that they are.
No responsibility, they behave without complicity,
First commitments intangible to themselves,
Knowing the need to remain unknown
They look sharp for the darkest cluster,
All those clouds are controlled like clouds,
Those at edge cannot bear too much reality.

What is unexpected yet known now arrives with a visible tick,
Quantum and glass fiber provide the occasion,
A record of the last lot of the man who never knew that
The best clocks now behave like clouds,
Atomic fountains tossed upwards by lasers
Interrogated before gravity can have its path,
The room cools to still and time lost its weight.

The clock ticks, the cloud forms and I am gone again.