Gordon R Menzies

I follow the pale, silken river
of your outstretched leg
from the river mouth, where
your painted toes glittered
...

I've given up poetry

no more pulled faces, long
as autumn grey shadows,
...

Silver leaves beneath the water
lay layered and unmoving
as though painted on the stream bed
discarded love letters, inkless
...

I have bared myself
a black wind blows
the night snow falls
falling flakes touch
...

These last leaves between us, Mother
falling from our old family tree
your last few clinging in your winter
mine, yet coloured in my autumn days
...

when she wears the long blue shirt
she is a lost ocean I wish to name
hypnotic fabric wave over wave
white buttons mother-of-pearl
...

Nestled there beneath her heart
listening to the waves crashing
with futility upon the curve
of her ribs, the sturdy piles
...

We've lost the accommodating grin
Of a summer morning, the soft, derisive jeers
For we Anglers, our flies and our waders
With shoes wet with the morning dew
...

For two and one half millennia
you slept in the cold Siberian ice
mistress of trackless, grassy wastes
warrior horsewoman wild, whose
...

At dawn that day we rode through fields of harvest sun
man and horse crying the name of their sire
but by noon the autumn skies began to scream
our enemies had sowed our fields with fire
...

white flecked sky fire
bobbing jewels on wave top
where passing Gull turns
touches wingtip to water
...

What do thieves know of labour
or the depth of our waterline?
The smell of your wood
still resides in my nostrils, my
...

The imperceptible impact of heartsong unheard
the quivering of kindred atoms at a distance,
mourning their separation…calling in voices
whose grey and dusty words cannot be scribed
...

he was sixteen and distracted,
walking along the tracks
the stone beneath his feet
shifting with every step
...

Let me rise, like a fallen seed unnoticed
in the leaf-littered green of her eyes
slowly unfolding there, unseen but sensed
living in the light of a gaze sent elsewhere
...

This woman's trust is a river running
a word pledged, instantly swept away
the water was black like her hair, her
overripe body a corpse on the bank
...

The door is partly open, white towel spills
from countertop, flirts with the floor
wet footprint ghosts across clay tile
misty mirror catches the tubs edge, veils
...

A low fire of silver birch branches, broken
hissing softly in a hot river stone fireplace
bread is toasting and tea is warming, and
outside, beyond the doorway to the woods
...

I still see your eyes above the rim
lowering with the glass cup, rising
together, twins suns on the horizon
the edges of things beyond sight
...

I ask questions, make observations
her eyes follow the words floating
like cottonwood seed in the breeze
gathered like snow on the bookshelves
...