Resting against a tree

Resting against a tree

Sheltered from the dark side

By a canopy of light

I saw the past

Refracted in rain glazed sunbeams

The scrub of rippled bark eased

By the softness of damp moss

Imagining your eyes

How they twinkled

With the pleasure

Of a promise

Sincerely made

A reflection in a window

Throws everything

Into confusion

Was it me or you I saw in the glass

One overlapping the other

You there

Not there

Someone opened a door

Changing the balance of things

The world was a painting

Still in life

But fluid in motion

Pre-Raphaelite allusions

Swamp the sophisticate

Leaving a trace of you

In the design of a lamp

An empty room

Enlivened by the thought

Of what might have been

If the moon

Was lower in the sky

The stars not enough

To navigate my way home

Would that it were different

But the grass is greener

Just after a storm

The mistake we make

Is to believe that what you see

Will be what you get

When so much detail

Is added as afterthought

To make sense of ink blots

Dots and dashes

Bleeding into squiggles

Your long lashes

Caught raindrops

The whole world

Captured in the refraction

Making light of a miracle

Why did it stop

Was it just the opening of a door

To another room

Pardon me for breathing

Clear the air with an undercurrent

Of gently seething memories

Slowly escaping their moorings

Float me a liferaft

It will be a safe landing to rely on

When the truth is

The bed you lie in

Is the one you die in

When you are left with

Life as the filling in a sandwich.