Plotinus

…In greater Beauty There
because There unmingled

mingled here.

There are rosebuds the size of thimbles
between pavement stones missing their mortar
where willful roots have wormed into
aquifers that make the mansions sway.

An old woman draws her umbrella
in the foyer of a stately cathedral

its ceiling saints presiding now so dimly

as Jesus’ white robes rain down flecks of paint.

And one of those flecks, no more or no less Beautiful

than an entire blessed fresco; trampled rose

equal to a meadow untouched by hands or feet;

on his deathbed the invalid is Adam;
the pious old woman Eve in a rainstorm.

On a Summer Glacier

keyhole in a drape of cloud - what is it you conceal? And kestrels darting in and out
like envoys of the sky,
their letters suffused with earth and heaven
                                                                         lone ranger hailstones too ill to be healed
                                                                         knifing half-melted through windscreens, half-cracked -
is it the master's malady?

Why does your mother the sky cry foul? Bestriding a glacier the size of Geelong
is a stream which turns curly hair straight
and straight hair white; on into a mountain cascade it runs,
but algae has formed there - fur on great granite boulders green;

weeds budding where once the ice sheet froze
even the core of the world - life in slosh-puddles,
new primordial ooze for billions of amoebae to sluice through,
symphonic stutters;

clouds jimmied open with coathangers
seabirds held to exorbitant ransom.

Marzipan

use your artisan’s fingers to make
fruit figurines for me;                                                                spray marzipan mangoes
with edible colour, place them in a                  dark
chocolate wagon I’ll not eat,                                              but admire.

Fragility of your                 folk                                 art evoked
when, on my skin,                                                                     those fingers put bloodless marks;

I long for you to paint another water hyacinth
                       at our beach-house, and sign it
with your French name                  so ruined in English.

Skip     dinner to work;                                                                        stay awake all night
                                                                                                  writing – and at the crack of dawn fashion four
fruits fit for winter,                                    before  we wash naked in the sea;

         rub      sand on my face,                                                                I topple backwards at a sleight

of   those   artisan’s   fingers.

Your black braids, they are always                       thinning; hairs
on the calm                    surface like tiny                  crisscrossed currents;

gulls overhead and                                                         flattened coral skimmed into hips -
I can see every vein on your body.

A basket of marzipan flowers – centerpiece of your new studio

was left too close to the kiln, now dried and cracked

and the book from which it was copied

published a century ago.

The Alice

And Lily in tears again

at some trifling fragment of nature

koala maybe, or a gum-leaf lumped

with spider eggs;

there are people around - why

does she embarrass him? Never call a spade a spade
she says - beauty is its own purpose;

usually he loves that about her
but all he wants now is a decent meal

and a cool place to sleep in The Alice.

Mania

When frightened people act in concert,

bowing to the mania of the gut

like meadows to sudden shade

watch freedom’s vain illusion fall,

collapse in a ruinous heap, and panic
slashed onto faces, and bodies running.