I am away
from the hurl and burly of life:
I lurk in my house, 
watching the enemy go by

The street is empty:
my enemy is invisible –
he may kill me
or he may not

I cannot hold your hand
or comfort you
in case the enemy leaps 
from your back to mine 

He may leap 
or he may not

He is not in my house
as far as I know

 He may be 
or he may not:
he may have been 
and gone

There is no way
of knowing

The sun is shining
but I cannot leave my house: 
I am probably too old –

I may be 
or I may not

There is no hurl and burly of life anywhere:
everyone is in their houses

They cannot go out:
they have forgotten the password

They may retrieve it
or they may not

God has the key:
He may throw it to us –
we may catch it,
or we may not

Somewhere underground
where tree roots and fungi interconnect
where rock falls apart and lets strangers in,
where cities crouch under cities
waiting to re-emerge

a man walks through walls,
living partly in stone 
and partly in air,
waiting for the viruses to leave

He moves out under the sea
and back
unearthing those things he values most
but paying a price,
needing to concentrate

One day he goes too far,
steps forward without thinking
then stops:

losing his grip on two domains,
he finds himself frozen between them
head in air
body in rock
unable to move

Somewhere underground
someone is laughing,
but no-one can hear him

Out of context
your lips are extraordinarily direct
your eyes unmistakable

Out of context
I am uncertain
about my reaction

Why are you here tonight
out of context,
not fitting that space allotted to you?

Uncertainty is a principle with me:
sometimes it helps
and sometimes it doesn’t

Sometimes I die
and sometimes I don’t:
sometimes I am simply 
in a box, like a cat
out of context

like you 

I want to be constant
but I have a plank in my eye

I am uncertain
whether it is out of context
or if we should walk on the beach
dissolve into the sunset,
uncover everything,
solve the universe,
set it in stone

In white snow
on a grey day
lines fade away
and there is no shadow

Like an avalanche,
beauty buries itself,
paints itself blind,
covers its face

and you, even you
are almost invisible,
shape-aching for the sun
to throw itself
into the fray

or darkness to fall

either extreme revealing
suddenly,
like a secret,
the real universe –

the one that was always there:
full colour
every hue
high definition
digitally true

I saw the bomb map yesterday,
before I was exploded:

paper-bag-brown tags like a deflated concertina
litter the streets
spatter the battered past
like lost letters, sorted but
no longer expected

And ghosts, too –
captured light emerging
from another dimension
displaying the precision of chance –
one house totally destroyed but
still attached 
to its untouched neighbour

Gazing at the tragedy, I know that inside me there is
something in ruins too,
something destroyed,
but next to it – on the outside –
something standing firm,
looking good

No map could track this disaster –
only something miraculous
coming down from heaven
healing the rift in history

I shift from one foot to another
desperate to stand in a safe spot
praying for precision
in my favour 

Christmas Day is empty
no-one passes by:
blackbirds wait beside the door,
there’s nothing in the sky

and I in my home scar
hunkering down
like a long-lived limpet, familiar
with this part of town

Out on a limb,
like desperate travellers looking for somewhere to stay
like lonely shepherds in the dark
like a young girl suddenly with child
like wise men laughed at, following a wild idea

we are lost in a shapeless world
waiting for something to happen
out of step with time

unaware of the resting place
and the angels
trying to see through the pain
something in the shape of a star

until at the perfect moment, just off the beat,
the sound of singing
or a knock on the door,
a safe delivery:

as if we had found something lost
like a coin or a sheep
or someone sleeping in a field:
someone who, on closer inspection,
appears to be us

I stand on the edge of eternity:
a door opens, and I look back at the universe,
which sparkles and throbs with life

I know I must not touch
the angel at the door
of creation

If I do, I will have to go on
into the realm of angels,
but back there in the coruscating night
people are calling to me

I still belong
in that crazy fairground

I do not know why,
or how I can help,
or what I have done so far

I reached out,
but no-one responded

I like the look of the angel
at the door of creation, and
the angel smiles at me

I do not touch him:
all I want is beauty,
or is it holiness?

I do not touch the angel

I look again at eternity:
the nurse comes
to give me painkillers

Sixty years on, the trains
still run at the bottom of my garden.

I return, expecting to see
uprooted rails, something for walkers,
a crazed cycle path,
but I hear the train, and I see
the track, though the meadows it ran through
have been shaved and smartened
into a blazered sports field, and a fence
blocks my old path to the dark woods.

I search for signs of my childhood,
marks I might have made.

Someone has thrown away the broken tooth
and the bicycle,
and the moon my father chased up the street
got away – as did the boy
who pulled his toy from underneath a moving car
while I stood transfixed.

But the numbers remain:
the pavements, the houses,
the steps towards school.

The scene of my first major crime
(grand theft marble)
has been wiped clean
like my sins.

No more lovely young girls,
no more shotguns,
no more holes in the ground.

Everything is neat now, 
except the forces’ club and its
car park in no-man’s-land,
leaking on to the street, as it always did.

Swinging on some railings by the iron road,
I dropped a magical red magnet
and could never find it.

Perhaps that is what draws me back
to this unremarkable street,
this shadowed and temperamental sky
under which strange things happened
to someone I almost knew.

Travelling back through the centuries
past standing stones
and hollow hungry mounds,
we arrive at Yesnaby, 
where cliffs and castles
fall into the sea, 

waves crash recklessly in
eating away at what is unseen,
giving us no warning
that soon we will be crashing too
struck down by a mystery,
inches from all those Viking footprints,
broken bones and bruising on the horizon
and all over the island

But that unpredictable beauty lingers
as my eyes close 
just for a second
until the real world breaks through 

And still I remember Yesnaby
where as usual I did not go far enough
and so missed the glory of it all
not once but twice

The glory is still there, though,
a thousand miles and a few yards away,
waiting for me