Poems unspoken.
Artwork unmade.
Novels unwritten.
A life unlived.

What is life
but the churning froth
of water washing over rock?

for Zoe, on the occasion of her 15th birthday


Only life can tell
what life will be.
If
in twenty years' time
we can still
take coffee in the park,
talk philosophy
and hobbits,
I will be a happy man.

Quiet on my heart
sudden slow-motion
juxtaposes worlds of now
and memory
constructed moments
that cannot exist

but for

but for

Can you speak my name?
I chew only air, this substance
all shadow, as though sipping coffee
at the shore of the world waters
would invoke the spirit hovering
above the darkness of the whole-souled one.
What can a mere shadow say to another
but to acknowledge insubstantiality
like blood in our veins,
the flow of emptiness birthing
the moments of our form
dancing on fire-flickered walls
of Plato's cave deep
in our imaginary minds.