Two Ways To Do Rain (For mum’s birthday)

It is one of the earliest memories I have

Like most of them it is happy

Me, my brothers and you walking home

Through grey streets

Hoods up

Heads down

Rain pounding the city like it was trying to prove something

Like it had heard stories about the soil deep beneath our feet and was trying to break through the concrete to find it

I remember you saying

We have two choices

Be miserable and wet

Or jump in every puddle until we get home

Jumping without thinking

We were giants in that moment

As the water sprayed around us

Growing just to keep our smiles contained

Each puddle growing with us until we were large enough to jump between lakes

Seek another to jump through again and again

Each time we were giants

There is a part of me

That thinks of this memory every time it rains

And as I smell the stone and earth through the mist

I grow taller standing in the wrong shoes for the streets playing at ocean

And I cannot help but smile

This is the part of me that laughs at thunder

The part that thinks of home and the sea in the same breath

Smiling at strangers parting pavement lakes

I think of the lesson you taught us that day

It is one of my fondest memories

The two ways to do rain.

Little Sickle and Me

Little Sickle is shining again!

The last time I saw it shine this bright

I was a lighthouse

In a high walled flat

My rooms they turned with a shadow

I crawled under blankets

Horded myself for a moment

I wouldn’t know it until it found me

So I waited there

Wrapped tight with a book of poems and a torchlight

Like a child reading about cowboys and the Great West

I made promises to go out there someday

Outside my window, the clouds ran buffalo around rooftops

John Wayne was pushing herds past the moon

Giving them life

Making them bold

He the ever technicolour relic in a peach scarf and midnight blue shirt

All six shooters and tin stars.

Me and John, we had an understanding

He kept them buffalo moving nice and slow

And I would throw him the occasional word or two when he came by

Usually he ended up with the unfinished poems in his saddle bags

I thought this to be a good deal most nights.

Sometimes the way I yawn

Reminds me of nothing but a bear

Shaking water and fish scales and the colour orange

My fur flowing as if holding hands with the movement

I shine bright

Little sickle isn’t the jealous type though

She lets me pretend to be like her

In these moments I am a streetlamp playing at constellation

While she spends her days making music of vacancy

At night she carves suburban streets empty

Except for fox dancing and bark moaning.

There are nights when little sickle and I dance a mean jig

Others where we talk slow

Still more where we walk in silence.

In the arms of the city

I daydream about the mountains we all came down from

The oceans we climbed up from

Little sickle kisses these thoughts like a child  healing playground bruises

We know these dreams will one day outlive us all

So we watch them grow

Shining all the while.