The Source

More than the silence after a rainstorm
More than the hum of a fridge in a house

More like a quiet lawn as yet unseen by morning bathers

The breath of a mouse or the tiny fly’s wing beat
Could find it

An afterthought drubbing against a steamed up window
Could be let out to find it

It begins when a timed question reveals everything about a life
Tick. There
Or a life up until then

It is seeing from a distance,
a fire engine loose its way round a tight bend
Ladders sledging off over the moor

The cinematographer who stares into a swimming pool and sees red
Just before he goes mad
has witnessed it

There is a source somewhere inside that bubbles,
from which it escapes

Like the soft emanation of blood from a wound

Yet it’s harder, it is edged
a prism that splits light
that bends the truth

That has conversations in low voices with dark matter
I have heard it

I have seen it
And there is no doubt at all that it is red

A Wish Not Won

If I gaze long at the dull bricks
Maybe they too will levitate
Wall, house and all

If I let each flowers’ summer scarlet
Or summer yellow, bleed to rainbow
Yellow, blue, green and all

If I could catch each falling flake
Of snow and pass them back to heaven
In snowy fires that glow

If I could pluck each feather
From my soul and soar in flight
Soul, breath, you and all

Would you be mine and whole and done?
Or would you be yours: a wish not won?