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
...

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
...

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

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
...

Shaded from the day, with
skins withered by the hot hands
of the demons they converse with there
and their eyes more empty than
...

She tells me that if I smoke it
I'll forgo her kisses this night
so, I think on it o'er a dram
consider its earthy brown
...

those lonesome nights
when the absence of you
in my arms is so keenly felt
and the wind and water
...

Crow couple stalks through sea-blown grass
where tiny white flowers are scattered like salt
a lone slender gull with the wind in his eyes
watches their progress and ours, perched
...

You walked into another dream of mine
where there was a verdant hill and a view
your eyes like the grass, the sky, the earth
your painted toes, blue meadow flowers
...

magpie eyed and clever, deft fingered
girls gathering the blue-green fragments
worn smooth in countless sands, like
blue shards of broken hearts falling there
...

She is the Last African…

Her skin aspired to night sky, resolute
in the face of hot savannah star light
...

The gulls are back in the Cold Garden
up and down the river they are calling
gathered by the bridge Louise' father built
they cry for you, to you, they cry for me
...

When the brown river rose we fled, took nothing
it frothed and raged and pummeled, an angry
woman scorned and weeping, hating all she loved
in the garden the blue flowers failed and fell
...

every day I wonder where you are, I
look out over this endless black ocean
and the rage of waves that took you
this gathering of tears, tastes of salt
...

Crow call at dawn on Buffalo Mountain
Fire lit brick and dancing flame light
wooden rafters and sleeping woman
murmuring firelight catches red hair
...

I follow her on a Monday meandering
through the Cold Garden under blue sky
damning and cursing the grid work of 1904
watching the numbers fall from street signs
...