a sequence for my daughter

jigsaw child
fitting words
fall together

only this
the flicker of blood
barely glimpsed

singled out
by silence
our mutable feast

in the world
if only of it
daughter buffalo

echoing
what has no voice
daughter of mine

advent silence
speaking our language

after rain too
the sea has no colour
of its own

am I to be the words no more

awake again . . .
has dawn recreated
the am I was?

dead silence . . .
an ancestral wisdom
in so few words

grave silence –
a distant fantail
barely heard

heaven-sent . . .
vernix enfolds the word
whispered in doubt

midnight hunt . . .
every pulse pledged
to the prey

midsummer night
the moon hangs about
like a suicide

moonlit sea
bound to me in this ditch
of ownership

my heartbeat
on mesolithic time
once more

night falls on
night falling on
a dark sea

notes towards an end

always now
before it has a name
morning light

does it live
the other I think
in the word

vital signs
the form conforms
to the word

eye to eye
what comes to pass
with a yes

no room now
light without end
fills the night

to be
what is hidden
and seen

Otata 13 - January 2017

open hand . . .
her call curls out from
the unheard

pond ripple . . .
the one I am
no more

still life . . .
all my colours
from dusk

still us –
sounds aflutter
enter the light

up, down
a leaf adrift
or not