All who have no faith in time
live at peace in a timeless mousehole
a hole in the fabric of nothing at all,
where a moment is but a whisker
that twitches infinity.
Danny boy
walked boldly out of O'Reilly's Irish pub
right into a catastrophic gap in reality,
immediately he was drunk on his own legend
knees buckled, his head lolled.
Back in some fictional homeland
his mother sang like a bird in a kitchen
while she stirred a dark mouse stew,
Danny's eyes flowed over
with all the milky dreams of the unborn.
The cosmic joke is endlessly amusing.
It is not a matrix nor a malignant mystery,
it is the love of the undying,
the faith of all those that have lost all faith
it is the tall stories we tell ourselves
that make even shameless death shudder.
The mouse squeaks
and yet another tale
falls through a torn pocket
to be heard as birdsong
by a perfectly conscious
oblivion.
It is barely light;
the coffee cup abandoned last night
is half full of shadows.
Through the window
an armada of geese
rows across a silent movie.
A shallow doorstep of time
has pardoned this moment
of all past crimes.
The world
(that prismatic spinning ghost)
has not washed its eyes yet,
the kitchen clock still dreams.
The coming day will sneak through
a mousehole of possibility
garbed in new clothes,
a look so unlikely
that you may not see it arrive.
You have to show up in this pause,
to know when that river of you
is flowing and rising,
then you can ride the wake
of the travelling geese
while making fresh coffee.
Hear the wild sky singing
under journeying wings.
Shifting focus from farm to stars
the drifting night begins
where listless day turns to mist.
Beyond the harbour bar
boats put out to sea.
By dawn the salty breeze
is flecked with foam
it peppers the Postie
as he makes his way
around the quay.
He stops to watch
the fishing boats
ploughing home
through pearly sea.
And dreaming
of what the day might bring
sleepy couples, yawning,
pad downstairs.
In chorus all the kettles sing
above the morning news
of stocks and shares.
And thirstily,
a hundred cups of tea
are raised to lips
simultaneously.
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